AIFF 2016: Features In Competition

Features are full length fictional films.  Films in competition are those chosen by the original screeners to be eligible for awards.

• a list of the super shorts in competition
• list of the programs where they appear and when
• description of each super short in competition in alphabetical order

I'd note that while these are the screeners picks, screeners don't always agree, so some would have chosen other super shorts as the best.  I often disagree with the screeners, but this is a good start.

Features in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Demimonde	Attila Szász	Hungary	1:25:00
Donald Cried	Kyle Martin	USA	1:25:00
First Girl I Loved	Karem Sanga	USA	1:26:00
Heredity	Carlos G Vergara	Columbia	1:40:10
Planet Outtakring	Michi Riebl	Austria	1:30:00
Youth in Oregon	Joel David Moore	USA	1:40:00

Demimonde
Attila Szász
Hungary
1:28:00

From Huniwood (Hungarian Film Festival Berlin):

"In January 1914, a horrific murder shocked the city of Budapest. Elza Mágnás, a famous courtesan, was strangled and her body thrown into the icy waters of the Danube. The film which is based on a true story chronicles the last four days of Elza’s life through the eyes of a naive maid, portraying Elza’s complex relationship with her housekeeper, her sugar daddy and her young lover. (HFM)"

 Director Szász's The Ambassador To Bern won the best feature at the 2014 AIFF.  It was an excellent film and I'm sure this one will be a contender this year.  I did a Skype interview with Szász then and part of it was about this film.  I'll try to edit it to focus on Demimonde.  But it's in sections with transcript so it is easy to find.

Here's what he said two years ago:

"Q: What's the new film about?
The assassination of a famous courtesan….Years ago that shook up the entire city of Budapest, everybody was talking about it because the courtesan was very famous, everyone knew about her and they were shocked because someone famous was getting murdered.
Q:  Was that before or after the Arch Duke got shot?
It’s before.  It takes place in January, so it’s maybe a couple of months before the assassination [of the Arch Duke].  It’s a style piece.  It’s the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy.  So it’s very difficult to recreate the era, because we have to start from scratch, the costumes, the props, set, everything.  And we have so little money again, but I just couldn’t refuse this chance because the script is again something I love very much.  I was warned, do you remember the first time you had to shoot in 17 days with so little money, you suffered and you were frustrated, and you want to do it again?  I said, yes, because it’s a good script and we have now, nineteen days so it’s two more days, - piece of cake - probably it's a bit longer,  the story. so it’s very difficult to shoot again, but hopefully next time we’ll have the backing of the film fund and we’ll have maybe three or four times the time and money, because it’s normal that Hungarian films are being shot in 35, 40, maybe 45 days and we had less than 20 both times."

Donald Cried
Kyle Martin
USA
1:25:00

From the Donald Cried website:

"Peter Latang (Jesse Wakeman) left working class Warwick, Rhode Island to reinvent himself as a slick, Wall Street mover and shaker. Fifteen years later, when he's forced to return home to bury his Grandmother he loses his wallet on the trip. Stranded, the only person he can think of to help him out is his next door neighbor and former childhood friend Donald Treebeck (Kris Avedisian). Donald hasn't changed a bit, and what starts as a simple favor turns into a long van ride into their past."

And interesting point from the director's notes from the same link:

"For me specifically it had a lot to do with the guilt of how I treated people in high school and the guilt I carried with me.  Jesse and Kyle  (co-writers) come from the same really small town in Northern California and brought elements of their experience going home. All the Rhode Island elements, the people the neighborhoods, were very specific to my experience growing up there in the 80's."

Donald Cried from Groove Garden on Vimeo.



First Girl I Loved
Karem Sanga
USA
1:26:00

From Variety:

"Anne (Dylan Gelula, from Netflix’s “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”) is a mildly quirky 17-year-old who lives with her single mom (Pamela Adlon) and exercises her arty side as photographer for the school yearbook. It’s in the latter capacity that she encounters softball-playing senior star athlete Sasha (Brianna Hildebrand), and is instantly smitten. "

Image also from Barranquilla

Heredity
Carlos G Vergara
Columbia
1:40:10

I was trying to find something on this film more than just the Bear Tooth blurb, but there isn't a lot out there.  I suspect this is pretty close to what the Bear Tooth says in English.  From Festival Internacionale de Cines Barranquilla

"Sinopsis:  Tati  y  Pedro  llevan  una  vida  rutinaria  hasta  que  él  amanece  convertido  psicológicamente en un niño. Buscando la cura Tati lleva a Pedro a donde él vivió su infancia,  allí Pedro se reencuentra con su familia y a ninguno reconoce, en cambio juega y es feliz como  cuando realmente era niño. Después de que su madre lo ve en una de sus crisis decide revelar  un secreto, esto hace que Tati lleve a Pedro a seguir las huellas de su padre. Encontrarlo para  que haga catarsis es la última esperanza."

Again, you can get this in English at the Bear Tooth link.

Screenshot from outtake on Planet Ottakring's website

Planet Ottakring

Michi Riebl

Austria

1:30:00

Bear with me on this one.  This some interesting background that will add depth to your understanding of the movie.  I couldn't find a good English description for this film, so I started with the German synopsis from the film's website:

"Eine Krise zieht ihre Kreise um den Planet Ottakring: Disko, der letzte Pate stirbt, Frau Jahn, Kredithai vor Ort, übernimmt die Macht. In dieser Situation gerät die Wirtschaft des Bezirks ins Strudeln. Sammy ein junger und nicht sehr überzeugter Kleinganove, aber Erbe Diskos, ist gezwungen zu handeln. Valerie – Wirtschaftsstudentin aus Deutschland – gerät im Zuge ihrer Masterarbeit ins Zentrum des Geschehens. Gemeinsam mit Sammy und seinen Freunden bilden sie eine Allianz gegen die heimtückische Vorgangsweise von Frau Jahn und finden dabei ein Wirtschaftssystem, von dem eigentlich alle profitieren können. Wären da nicht auch noch Gefühle mit im Spiel. David gegen Goliath in Wiens 16. Bezirk!"

Here's my translation with some help from internet dictionaries.  I was still a little uncertain, but checked with an Austrian friend, who confirmed I'd gotten the gist and then I was able to tweak it into more idiomatic English.

"A crisis erupts in the Viennese neighborhood of Ottakring.  Disko, the last godfather, dies.  Mrs. Jahn, a local loan shark, takes power.  The economy of this district then goes to hell.  A younger, and not very eager minor hoodlum, Sammy,  Disko's heir, is forced to act.  Valerie - a business student from Germany [it's an Austrian film] - while working on her masters thesis, finds herself in the center of the action.  She builds an alliance with Sammy and his friend against the malicious approach of Mrs. Jahn and through this finds an economic system in which all can profit. If only there weren't feelings coming into play.  David and Goliath in Vienna's 16th district."

Poking around with my sketchy German that is certainly no match for Viennese dialect, I did discover that the movie's ideas go back to an experiment in the 1930s in a place called Wörgl where they had a "money-experiment" to deal with the desperate economic situation.  This comes from a post about the film when it was shown in Wörgl.  

I did also find something on this in English at Lietaer.com:

"One of the best-known applications of the stamp scrip idea was applied in the small town of Wörgl in Austria in 1932 and 1933.  When Michael Unterguggenberger (1884-1936) was elected mayor of Wörgl, the city had 500 jobless people and another 1,000 in the immediate vicinity.   Furthermore, 200 families were absolutely penniless.   The mayor-with-the-long-name (as Professor Irving Fisher from Yale would call him) was familiar with Silvio Gesell‘s work and decided to put it to the test.

He had a long list of projects he wanted to accomplish (re-paving the streets, making the water distribution system available for the entire town, planting trees along the streets and other needed repairs.)  Many people were willing and able to do all of those things, but he had only 40,000 Austrian schillings in the bank, a pittance compared to what needed to be done.
Instead of spending the 40,000 schillings on starting the first of his long list of projects, he decided to put the money on deposit with a local savings bank as a guarantee for issuing Wörgl’s own 40,000 schilling’s worth of stamp scrip.   He then used the stamp scrip to pay for his first project.   Because a stamp needed to be applied each month (at 1% of face value), everybody who was paid with the stamp scrip made sure he or she was spending it quickly, automatically providing work for others.   When people had run out of ideas of what to spend their stamp scrip on, they even decided to pay their taxes, early."

The post goes on to say it was so successful that other Austrian towns wanted to copy it and the Central Bank clamped down.  They were sued, but the Austrian Supreme Court backed the bank and these schemes became criminal.

From the first post above, the writer also says that director Michi Riebl says that the Ottakring district no longer has the gangsterism in this form.

Image from Teaser-trailer.com

Youth in Oregon
Joel David Moore
USA
1:40:00

JDM**

There's something here for everyone.  Youth in Oregon is the directorial debut for Avatar actor (Dr.Norm Spelling), Joel David Moore.  It takes place in Oregon with acting greats like Frank Langella and Billy Crudup.  There's  Married... with Children's Christina Applegate and  Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman's Mary Kay Price.


From the YouTube description:

"When 82-year-old curmudgeon RAYMOND Ingersol tells his family that he has made arrangements to be euthanized in Oregon, his daughter KATE is determined to stop him. But when another family emergency arises, Kate’s husband BRIAN finds himself with the unlucky task of driving his father-in-law from New York to Oregon AND convincing the crotchety old man that he doesn’t want to die. The problem: Brian hates Raymond. And with Raymond’s wino wife ESTELLE tagging along for the journey, it’s just in-laws and the open road for the next 3000 miles."

Variety reviews don't pull punches.  But they aren't looking for film-festival flicks, as the last line of this quote suggests:

"Rarely has euthanasia seemed more desirable than it’s made to appear in “Youth in Oregon,” a torturous saga about a man dying of an incurable heart condition who sets out on a cross-country journey to Oregon, where killing oneself is legal. Maudlin and mannered, this contrived indie squanders another fine late-career performance from Frank Langella, dousing its treatment of the subject in affectations until it’s snuffed out any trace of genuine life. While it fits comfortably into the fragmented-family drama subgenre prized each year at the Tribeca Film Festival, its groan-worthiness is apt to get it buried at the box office."

But here's from a more sympathetic reviewer.   Mary Kay Place on her character from The Mary Sue   answering the question, "Did you feel their marriage had gone through a change before the film started that altered their dynamic?"

Mary Kay Place: I did, and I think that’s when she became a heavy drinker. Because he was withdrawing and becoming angrier and more isolated. And that was infuriating to her, because I image them being a solid couple and had been true partners. And that partnership started dissolving as he became more isolated and cranky. Well, I think he’s always been cranky, but now he’s become crankier than ever. And it’s been difficult on my character, because she felt as if she’d lost her partner before he died. He had already slipped away.

There's a note on this YouTube video - "This video is unlisted. Be considerate and think twice before sharing." - but this seems an appropriate place for it and I can't find any easy links where I could ask for permission. I can't find a website or FB page for this film.

**Screenshot from IMDB


Let me get this up so I can start on the Documentaries in Competition.  I don't usually get more than a few of these up each year as a preview.  Let's see how far I can get. I'll also try to add the times and locations for each of the film showings.   This one went pretty easily until I got to Planet Ottakring which took a while.  This looks like a solid group of films and there's still a bunch more other Features, many of which I'm sure are going to be well worth watching.