BEST OF LFF 2015

My verdict on the 20 titles that I caught at the 2015 BFI 59th Annual London Film Festival. Alas, for the first time since my first fest, I did not see the film which the official jury declared Best Film from Official Competition - Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier. But I did see very many other great films, including four 4-star films, the most of my three visits here to date. Only one award per film, so worthy winners in more than one category have had to make to with just the one win, making way for other films to prevail elsewhere.

Best Film
The Assassin (Hou Hsiao Hsien)
Last year's winner: From What Is Before (Lav Diaz)

Special Mention for Best Film
Park Lanes (Kevin Jerome Everson)
Last year's winner: Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (Wiam Simav Bedirxan and Ossama Mohammmed)

Runners-up for Best Film / Special Mention
The Forbidden Room (Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin) / Carol (Todd Haynes)

Best Directing
Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin (The Forbidden Room)
Runners-up: Hou Hsiao Hsien (The Assassin) / Kevin Jerome Everson (Park Lanes)
Last year's winner: Aleksey German (Hard to Be a God)

Best Female Actor
Kwon So Hyun (Madonna)
Runners-up: Rooney Mara (Carol) / Cate Blanchett (Carol)
Last year's winner: Li Yi Qing (Dearest)

Best Male Actor
Ralph Ineson (The Witch)
Runners-up: Karim Pakachakov (Under Electric Clouds) / Ralph Fiennes (A Bigger Splash)
Last year's winner: Body / Luke (White God)

Best Screenplay
Phyllis Nagy (Carol)
Runners-up: Aleksey German (Under Electric Clouds) / Robert Eggers (The Witch)
Last year's winner: Lisandro Alonso and Fabian Casas (Jauja)

Artistic or Technical Achievement
Elena Okopnaya (Under Electric Clouds) - art direction
Runners-up: Lee Ping Bin (The Assassin) - cinematography / Huang Chih Chia and Liao Ching Song (The Assassin) - editing
Last year's winner: Faris Badwan and Rachel Zeffira (The Duke of Burgundy) - music

LFF REVIEW - UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS (ALEKSEY GERMAN)

Each scene, each moment within a scene, each dream within a sequence within a chapter within Aleksey German's Under Electric Clouds is like a microcosm of the film itself. The filmmaker son of his namesake father shares a familial interest in theme and technique, a certain distance and density of style that feels wholly idiosyncratic, and a talent for directing that produces consistently interesting work. German Jr. studies the notion of historical cycles in Under Electric Clouds, a view of the future that is nevertheless one of the past, of the future of the past and of the past of the future. Naturally, it's thus about the present, whose immortality ensures its own consistency - nothing ever truly changes in an infinite cycle. The manners by which this theme is expressed are immensely varied; this is so very dense a film that it'd take many viewings and much further analysis to identify and decipher all of them, but they range from structural to stylistic, metaphorical to overt, character-based to event-based, visual to sonic and surely more and more still. It's a funny, touching and beautiful film to experience for the first time too, and admirable in the depth of German's vision, ably supported by outstanding crew credits, including senior art director Elena Okopnaya and cinematographers Sergey Mikhalchuk and Evgeniy Privin. As an inhabitant of the present, as we all are, German presents an internal perspective on life therein, ruminating on our ignorance, our capacity for triviality and distortion of priorities, our ignorance of the fallibility of many of the notions that define our existence. He insists that we be led, shown the way as his characters are if ever we are to progress; yet Under Electric Clouds is a film not about progression but about stagnation. We can travel as far as we like along this cycle, but we'll always end up back in the present.