Opening and Closing show - VisitBrussels

FILMS IN ICOMPETITIONCAPTIFS (Yann Gozlan/France)A Yann Gozlan FilmScreenplay: Yann Gozlan & Guillaume LemansZoé Félix, Eric Savin, Arié Elmaleh, Ivan Franek, Igor Skreblin, Philippe Krhajac, Margaux Guenier, Goran Kostic, Jana Bittnerova,Sacha Mijovic, Clara Barbosa, Typhaine Hilaire, Thaïs Fischer, Eric Kailey, Loïc Risser, Evelyn BiecherRunning time: 84 min.Somewhere in Eastern Europe, Carole is a young nurse with a humanitarian aid groupthat has finished its mission. But just then, the young woman and her two colleaguesare kidnapped by strangers for mysterious reasons. Held captive, cared for and keptalive in an oppressive and sinister setting, the three prisoners are soon horrified todiscover what their kidnappers really have in store for them...First-timer Yann Gozlan finally switches from short to long after realising two acclaimedshort features (Pellis and Echo). With Captifs aka Caged, Gozlan wanted to test hisown relationship with violence and anxiety. In other words, he tried to find a personalway as a director of transmitting those two harsh feelings to the audience, withoutfalling into the usual trap of increasing the level of violence. Very comfortable with thearchetypal conventions of the genre, Gozlan’s main inspiration for this movie was Franju’s The Eyes Withouta Face (1959). He displays masterful sobriety in dealing with a topic subject to an increasing amount ofmedia coverage these days: organ trafficking. Starring Zoé Félix (Welcome to the Sticks, Déjà Mort), AriéElmaleh (Persepolis, Chouchou) and Eric Savin (also in Mirages, screened at the BIFFF).ESSENTIAL KILLING (Jerzy Skolymowski/Hungary-Ireland-Norway-Poland)A Jerzy Skolymowski filmScreenplay: Ewa Piaskowska & Jerzy SkolimowskiCast: Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner, David Price, Nicolai Cleve Broch, Stig Frode Henriksen, Zach Cohen, Iftach Ophir, TracySpencer Shipp, Klaudia Kaca, Dariusz Juzyszyn, Robert Mazurkiewicz, Lars Markus Verpeide Bakke, Even Loken Bergan,ThomasBerg, Eirik Daleng, Morten EngerRunning time: 83 min.Captured by US Special Forces in Afghanistan, Mohammed is transported to asecret military black site. When the army convoy plummets off a steep hill,Mohammed finds himself free and on the run behind enemy lines. A hostile, snowblanketedforest gradually turns out to be an Eastern European wilderness.Relentlessly pursued by his captors, Mohammed constantly confronts the need tokill in order to survive.Legendary filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, who – let’s be chauvinistic for once –won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for the Belgian shot The Departure(1967), is far from self-indulgent when it comes to his work. But with EssentialKilling, he is in no doubt: it’s his best film! Intentionally vague on the maincharacter (a civilian caught in the wrong place at the wrong moment or a fierceTaliban fighter?), Skolimowski’s main point is more about a struggle of a managainst the wilderness than a political metaphor. From this perspective, he has also skipped superfluousdialogue and the names of the protagonists, apart from the two main characters (Vincent Gallo andEmmanuelle Seigner – who happens to be the wife of his fellow countryman Roman Polanski!). At the 2010Venice Film Festival, Essential Killing won the best actor award for Vincent Gallo and the Special Jury Prizefor Skolimowski.27