Laurent Cantet’s “The Class,” winner of the prestigious Palm d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and France’s submission to the Academy Awards for the best foreign language Oscar focuses on the classroom interactions between a high school teacher and his unruly, multicultural roster of young charges, presenting the face of the future of France.

Cantet got the idea for the film while while promoting his previous film, 2005’s “Heading South,” he met François Bégaudeau, who was promoting “Entre les Murs,” his book on his years as a high school teacher.

Cantet end up using Bégaudeau as the teacher in the film, and through casting found a school and the 25 volunteers who appear in the film. To allow the exchanges between Bégaudeau and the students to flow, Cantet had three cameras running at once, one on the teacher, one on the students and one to capture anything else. [via]

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The winners of the eleventh annual British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) were announced yesterday, Sunday 30 November at Old Billingsgate Market in London.

Johanna von Fischer and Tessa Collinson, BIFA co-directors say: “It’s been another stellar year for independent film in Britain. The diverse range of films nominated showcases an astounding lineup of talent both new and established that demands to be celebrated.”

Elliot Grove, founder of Raindance and the British Independent Film Awards says: “Tonight’s nominations and award winners prove that filmmaking in Britain is alive and well.”

John Woodward, Chief Executive Officer of the UK Film Council, the major funding partner of the BIFAs says: “This year’s BIFA nominations and award winners really highlight the range of talent working in the UK with powerful, ground-breaking and imaginative films coming from filmmakers with diverse voices. Over the years these awards have developed a great knack for discovering exciting new talent and promoting them to a wider film world, consequently championing British independent film excellence and originality.”

BIFA are proud to announce the following winners for this year’s Awards:

BEST BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM

Slumdog Millionaire (pictured above)

BEST DIRECTOR
Sponsored by The Creative Partnership

Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire

THE DOUGLAS HICKOX AWARD [BEST DEBUT DIRECTOR]

Steve McQueen – Hunger

BEST SCREENPLAY
Sponsored by BBC Films

Martin McDonagh – In Bruges

BEST ACTRESS
Sponsored by M.A.C

Vera Farmiga – The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

BEST ACTOR

Michael Fassbender – Hunger

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Alexis Zegerman – Happy-Go-Lucky

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Sponsored by Tiscali

Eddie Marsan – Happy-Go-Lucky

MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER

Dev Patel – Slumdog Millionaire

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION
Sponsored by Recorded Picture Company

The Escapist

RAINDANCE AWARD

Zebra Crossings

BEST TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT
Sponsored by Skillset

Cinematography – Sean Bobbitt – Hunger

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Sponsored by Chapter Media

Man on Wire

BEST BRITISH SHORT
Sponsored by Dailymotion

Soft

BEST FOREIGN FILM

Waltz with Bashir

THE RICHARD HARRIS AWARD (for Outstanding Contribution to British Film)
Sponsored by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, UK

David Thewlis

THE VARIETY AWARD

Michael Sheen

THE SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Sponsored by UK Film Council

Joe Dunton

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This Israel – German – France co-production portraits the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre.

In 1982 Folman was a 20 year old infantry soldier in the Israel defence forces. In 2006 he meets with a friend from the army service period, who tells him of the nightmares connected to his experiences from the 1982 Lebanon War. Folman is surprised to find out that he does not remember a thing from the same period. Later that night he has a vision from the night of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the reality of which he is unable to tell. In his memory he and his soldier friends are bathing at night at the seaside of Beirut to the light of flares descending over the city. Folman rushes off to meet another friend from his army service, who advises him to discuss it with other people who were in Beirut at the same time to understand what happened there and to relive his own memory. The film follows Folman in his conversations with friends, a psychologist and the reporter Ron Ben-Yishai who was in Beirut at the same time.

The movie explores how the young soldiers have dealt with their experiences of war. The hero has seemingly blocked out memories of the time, and his exploration of his vague memories serves as the vehicle for examination of his experience and that of his peers. A psychologist advises Folman’s character to compare his experience with that of his parents at the hands of soldiers during WWII. A sequence responding to this shows Russian soldiers allowed only 48 hours leave after a year at the front, only enough time to travel home and kiss wives and girlfriends and mothers on the train platform, then immediately departing on the same train back to the front. The young Israeli soldier remembers returning home on leave, in the midst of life going on without him. These soldiers are not masters of their own destiny. They are shown as victims of the randomness of war. The “reversal of guilt” theme recurs as the narrator questions soldiers who were seemingly powerless to stop the massacre when they first realised what was happening. Several early sequences in the film show the haphazard effects of combat when combatants and civilians are inextricably mixed with the carelessness and recklessness of young soldiers facing imminent death. This serves to polarise the issue of responsibility for the massacre later carried out in a calculated way.

Even though it might seem a little bit weird to se an animated film about such a traumatic story, the director had his reasons: 

“For a few years I had the idea for the film in my mind, but I wasn’t at all happy to do it in real-life video. Think how it would have looked: a middle-aged man being interviewed against a black background, telling stories that happened 25 years ago, without any archival footage to support them. Boring! Then I realised it could be told vividly in animation, with some fantastic drawings. War is surreal and memory is tricky  and I felt that our talented illustrators could do justice to my journey about re-awakening my memory.”

Despite what Folman thought, the movie was incredibly well received in Israel, where it won six Awards of the Israeli Film Academy.

Waltz with Bashir is also the Israeli submission to the next Academy Awards. 

There’s an intriguing political context to the film’s release earlier this year: critics of Israel had assumed that the state was complicit in the massacre, though Waltz With Bashir, while depicting the horrors of war, makes it clear that the Lebanese militia alone carried out the bloody deed. Folman believes this central fact lies behind the Israeli government’s support for his film: “I think they took this decision deliberately. I think they realised the more I criticise what happened, the more Israel is shown as a very tolerant country.

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What everybody knows, though is only a very small portion of what the Italian Mafia was in Italy and, unfortunately, still, partially, is.

There are many organizations more or less powerful, spread all over the country: Cosa Nostra, Camorra, ‘Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita, Stidda, Mala del Brenta, Banda della Magliana, Basilischi. All of them have something in common: they have been using and still use violence and threats to get what they want from scared and peaceful citizens.

“Gomorra” is a film by Matteo Garrone based upon the bestselling book “Gomorra” by Roberto Saviano (Crowned by the New York Times as one of the 100 best 2007 books). The movie won the Cannes Festival and it’s the Italian candidate for the Academy awards 2009.

It opens a window on the reality, maybe more dramatic and violent than the actual one, on a small town in the Southern Italy where the power of the Camorra has spred its tentacles in the life of the whole community. The story is told through the eyes of several characters living different situations, all connected to the Camorra.

The film, as well as the book are impregnated with almost tangible hard feelings towards this organization, feelings that most of the Italian people share, but only those who have endured this reality on their skin can really, deeply understand.

Saviano said: “3600 deaths ever since I was born. The Camorra killed more than the Sicilian Mafia, more than the ‘Ndrangheta, more than the Russian Mafia, more than the Albanian Mafia, more than the Spanish ETA and the Irish IRA coupled together, more than the Brigate Rosse, more than the NAR and more than all of the State bloodsheds in Italy”.

These deaths were not of soldiers fighting for their country. Most of them were innocent citizens, some were law enforcement both low and high ranked, all of them refused to bend their will to the violence of “the organization”.

This is the reality shown clear and graphic in “Gomorra” a movie that I can really recommend to anybody, any age and any country. Everybody should know what, for some people, exactly means, going to bed not knowing if they’ll ever wake up and waking up with the fear of not being able to ever go to bed again… And not because there is a war going on or an invasion by another country, but simply because that’s the reality of their lives, every day and there is no other option but accepting it.

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