BEAST
EUROPE’S NEW PROMISES
For the first time, this year the festival is embarking on a journey around the region known to the world as “Eastern Europe”. Trying to both strip the concept of its stereotypes as well as to add an international, broader dimension to it, our curators have chosen a very small number of films that dare you to step into the weirder side of things and embrace – yes! – the future of Europe!
The idea for this movie arose out of the director’s thought that came to him one cold morning in Warsaw: “Shit! How much time do I have left to make a movie about what it’s like to be young?” His hope with this film is to create a picture of how youth in all its crazy splendour can be more fully lived when you’re in it and more beautifully remembered once it has passed. Art school classmates Christopher and Michal restlessly roam Warsaw’s streets in search of living forever inside the beautiful moment. Never content with answers, they push each experience to its breaking point, testing what it might mean to be truly awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep.
The film is inspired by an event reported in the Bulgarian press. A social-realist parable exploring the themes of corruption, class differences, and the rural-urban divide in contemporary society. Tsanko Petrov, a railroad worker finds millions of leva on the train tracks. He decides to turn the entire amount over to the police, and the state rewards him with a new wristwatch, but soon the new watch stops working. Meanwhile, Julia Staikova, head of the PR department of the Ministry of Transport, loses Petrov’s old watch. And here starts his desperate struggle to get his old watch back, as well as his dignity.
An adult fairy tale. In mythology of mermaids, they are often portrayed as evil, wild, and predatory. Here the mermaid is a voracious but sensitive being who tries to follow the principles of the human world and loses her own identity. These mermaids do not wear seashell bras but rather chew on human hearts. A pair of mermaid sisters in an alternate 1980s Poland are drawn ashore to explore the wonders and temptations of life on land. Their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly auras make them overnight sensations as nightclub singers. One sister falls for a human, and the siblings’ bond is tested as love and survival come into conflict…
Virág Zomborácz’ first feature film. Its screenplay was her graduation project from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. The story portrays a pastor’s family and focuses on the relationship between the father and his son. The father is now dead and the son has to work out what’s keeping the annoying ghost of his father in the earthly dimension. He takes advice from a professional medium and starts to sew up a series of loose ends to set the ghost free. Such an unusual grieving process finally affects the life of the whole family.
The power plant is closing – unemployment takes over a town in eastern Slovakia. Ágoston, a tall, family man in his fifties ventures through eastern Europe in desperate attempt to get a job and fulfil his dream – to catch a big fish. In Baltic, he finds himself alone and deserted. His voyage leads him deeper and deeper into the ocean of bizarre events and encounters, with tall friendly woman, Russian friend with unfriendly intentions, and sad stuffed earless rabbit. Waves grind on sandy beaches and return to sea. New wave comes to wipe off the preceding one. The sea doesn’t end here and it definitely doesn’t start here. fulfilled life.