Jerzy Śladkowski: Don Juan
Taken from the site of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade (http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/) this text is written by festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic about the film to be shown tonight at the Sava Center in Belgrade:
This year’s winner of Europe’s largest documentary film festival in Amsterdam, IDFA, without a doubt is one of the best documentaries produced in recent years. The initial idea of the author was to make a film about psychiatric institutions and patients in Russia, and even during the first researches suddenly appeared Oleg, a young man trapped by autism, and his mother convinced that her son can and should do more to improve his life. Especially when it comes to women. And Oleg begins long battles to learn how to become Don Juan, to pierce even a little the armor that safely shields him from the world and girls. The camera begins to follow his therapies that slowly multiply and start turning into an interesting odyssey – from conventional conversation, to shocking, grotesque procedures, and finally to making the theater.
Following his hero, Jerzy Slatkovski with his team, in which an
important role has brilliant cinematographer Wojciech Staron, manages to be present in moments of crisis, debates and quarrels, to capture moments of opening and closing of the main character, to capture his emotions and blockades, without ever endangering the intimacy of the situation, nor to exceed the invisible boundaries of participants’ dignity. While shooting this superb study of the human condition, the author and his film crew managed to achieve the ideal, unattainable request for filmmakers – they have become invisible.
The documentary by one of the masters of European documentary, directed intelligently and focused, with extremely subtle images of warm colors, with the camera that is always in pace with the events, with perfectly constructed internal rhythms, this Film, starting with the always interesting and intriguing view of the “Rain Man”, develops a deep, warm and touching story about the person, creating the true, brilliant and convincing film hero!
Director’s Word: The best stories usually result from coincidences, accidental meetings and good luck.
The first shooting period was a deep unprepared dive into the world of Russian psychiatric care, with no great expectations.
Russian producer Elena Petlarskaya and I happened to hear Oleg and his mother quarreling in a psychiatric clinic in Nizhny Novgorod about Oleg’s inability to fix up a date with a girl. We introduced ourselves and I shared some memories of my own romantic misfortunes – it was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.
catndocs.com/index.php/categories/human-interest/744-don-juan
A comment on “Don Juan” on this site.
Sweden, Finland 2015, 92 minutes
