09/01/2020 - From 17 to 26 January, the ever-audacious festival will dazzle us with its ten rich sections

Technoboss by João Nicolau

It might have passed the twenty-year threshold, but Geneva’s Black Movie Festival doesn’t seem to have lost any of its characteristic ardour. Captained by the close-knit duo composed of directors Kate Reidy and Maria Watzlawick, and sunnier than ever (the festival poster by Neo Neo exudes a pool party atmosphere boasting desert décor in the form of plastic cacti designed by the artist Cetusss), between 17-26 January this year, the festival dedicated to independent film is inviting its audiences to fully immerse themselves in a programme that’s demanding and atypical, but which isn’t short on (self) irony either.

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Dark and troubling, but above all inventive and cathartic, the films on offer fall within no less than ten intriguing categories: “Black Movie For Kids, For Adults”, dedicated to short films, “Rebel Without A Cause”, which, as its name suggests, will home in on the first experiences and emotions of the young protagonists populating this section, “Singular Loners” consisting of a series of particularly audacious films on the theme of isolation, and “To Be Followed…”, the flagship section of the event, presenting the festival’s favourite directors; not to mention “The Women’s Labyrinth”, a section dedicated to women, their courage and their audacity, “Marcos, Ceausescu & Co”, composed of six fiction films inspired by the downward slide of authoritarian power, “Rituals” which talks to the irrational side we each hide within us, “Poor Lonesome Cowboys”, which transports us to far-away places on the edges of humanity, and the unmissable retrospective on the Algerian director who studied in France Malek Bensmail, who will also be delivering a masterclass (as part of the Talking Heads event), as will the legendary Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa.

Amongst the European films scattered among the various sections, we find the highly singular Technoboss [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: João Nicolau
film profile] by Portugal’s João Nicolau and the co-productions A Girl Missing [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Kōji Fukada and, in a Swiss premiere, A Tale of Three Sisters [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emin Alper
interview: Emin Alper
film profile] by Emin Alper, all within the “To Be Followed…” section. In the other festival sections, meanwhile, we find the Swiss film O fim do mundo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Basil Da Cunha
film profile] by Basil Da Cunha, Russia’s Why Don’t You Just Die! by Kirill Sokolov, French work Kongo [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Hadrien La Vapeur and Corto Vaclav, presented in a Swiss premiere in the “Rituals” section, and the Algeria- France co-production Roundabout In My Head [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Hassen Ferhani (“Rebels Without A Cause”). Likewise enjoying its Swiss premiere, though this time falling under the “Poor Lonesome Cowboys” banner, we find the co-production A Dark-Dark Man [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Adilkhan Yerzhanov (Kazakhstan-France). As for the “Singular Loners” group, this year’s offering will include Locarno’s Golden Leopard winner Vitalina Varela [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Pedro Costa, the surrealist documentary Dream Away [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by German artist Johanna Domke and Egyptian director Marouan Omara, the French film Makala [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emmanuel Gras
film profile] by Emmanuel Gras, the Swiss premiere of the Georgian-Russian work by Dmitry Mamuliya The Criminal Man [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and the road movie Talking About Trees [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Suhaib Gasmelbari. Last but not least, “Marcos, Ceausescu & Co” will play host to the Romanian huis clos Arrest [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrei Cohn
film profile] by Andrei Cohn, Lithuanian utopia Nova Lituania [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Karolis Kaupinis
film profile] by Karosils Kaupinis and Václav Marhoul’s almost unbearable work, The Painted Bird [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Václav Marhoul
film profile].

(Translated from Italian)