Two of the Competition Films at MIFF
– i.e. Moscow International Film Festival, that has a competition section for documentaries with 8 films. I have had the pleasure to get access to some of them, here are some notes on the two I have watched so far, a disappointment and a pleasant surprise:
It is no secret for readers of this site that Czech Helena Trestikova is a director, we have followed and highlighted for years for her long term observational documentaries on people living on the edge of society – “René”, “Katka”, “Marcela”, “Private Universe” to mention those who have travelled successfully all around. It is therefore understandable that the Moscow festival has picked her new film, made together with Jakub Hejna, “Doomed Beauty”, which has the actress Lida Baarová as the portrayed character, whose life and relationship to nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made her enemy of Czekoslovakia. Trestikova filmed her at the end of her life – the film is professionally made – fine archive of course but it is, sorry for this reaction, unbearable to watch the old woman crying all the time having problems with expressing herself. I can not help think that the footage should have stayed on the shelf.
The Korean film, however, “Mrs.B – A North Korean Woman”, shot over several years, brings a fascinating, unbelievable story to the screen about a woman, who is smuggled out of North Korea to China to be forced into marrying a Chinese farmer. She turns into being a smuggler and drug dealer herself, and has the intention to get her North Korean husband and her two sons out of the country to live with her in South Korea. She succeeds, but after being interrogated by the secret services from both Korea’s if I get it right, she is thought to be a spy. But basically she wants to return to China to her Chinese husband and his farmer family.
It is a difficult film that Jero Yun has made and you sense that it has not been possible to say and show everything. But it lives strongly in the scenes where you are at home(s) in China with the husband and his parents, and with the Korean family members the director has chosen to interview. They convey the confusing claustrophobic atmosphere that these poor people are in. But first of all it lives because of Mrs.B., who wants a decent life and puts a lot of energy into achieve that. And if you take all the politics connected to the three countries away, the film is maybe first of all a love story.
