Morgen

This Romanian film won the Ecumenical jury prize at Locarno last August and took Locarno's overall Runner Up prize as well as two additional jury awards...

Set on the border between Romania and Hungary, this is a modern immigration tale as told by director Marian Crisan that was inspired by a news article on illegal Turkish immigration.

The calm humanity of the Romanian character Nelu allows us to root for him as he helps the Turkish man in his quest to cross into Hungary and make his way toward his family in Germany.

Some humor, much honesty, and a thoroughly enjoyable film too...

The director made a wise choice to subtitle the Romanian character's dialogue and provide no translation for the Turkish man. This allowed the audience to experience Nelu's point of view in trying to understand another human being when words can sometimes get in the way...

Poetry

This Korean film is the second chapter of director Chang-dong Lee's study on forgiveness.

An elderly woman takes care of her ungrateful grandson and decides, on a whim, to take a poetry class. Her pursuit of poetry forces her to slow down and truly focus and closely study the daily life surrounding her.

Her life is suddenly turned upside down when it is revealed that her grandson has committed a horrible crime along with his friends and the other parents implore the grandmother to help them raise the money needed to keep the boys in school and out of jail...

The grandmother's moral dilemma provides the main through line for this slow, steady paced story.

To help cover for a grandson who is her own flesh and blood or to allow him to pay society's price for his grievous sin.

In the end she does the right thing and this also allows her to finish the poem for her class and become the only student who does so...

The Wedding Photographer

An aspiring photographer leaves his working class family in the country and moves to the big city of Stockholm.

While photographing a wedding he meets the woman of his dreams, who just so happens to be from the upper class.

This Swedish comedy by director Ulf Malmros did very well at the box office in his home country.

A modern take on the class differences that still exist within Sweden as well as a study of contrasts between the rural and metropolitan communities...

An enjoyable film.

- Director Ulf Malmros (on left) and his producer after the screening

JDIFF Screenwriting Panel

- (left to right) Brian O'Malley (Crossing Salween), Brendan McCarthy (Wake Wood), Thomas Hefferon (The Pool), Carmel Winters (Snap), moderator Barry Dignam

- yes, that's me in the front row...

The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival kicked off on Thursday and will last until next Sunday.

I attended a packed forum for screenwriters sponsored by the festival. This panel featured four Irish working screenwriters and offered them an opportunity to share their stories of how they navigated the Irish film industry to get their films produced and distributed...

The Irish film industry is quite small and is in a state of transition right now due to the economic climate and the overall desire to move away from the more traditional "Irish" stories in an effort to make more modern and compelling films that will appeal to a broader audience.

The difficult question for the Irish film industry is that by doing this will they lose their cultural uniqueness, their identity, their Irishness...?

We Were Soldiers

Many have recommended this Vietnam war movie to me over the years and I finally had an opportunity to see it.

This story is based on the critically acclaimed book "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young," by Lieutenant General Hal Moore (Mel Gibson's character in the film) and reporter Joseph Galloway, both of whom were intimately involved in the first major battle between the U.S. military and the North Vietnamese army at the Battle of la Drang on November 14, 1965.

Heavily outnumbered in this ambush, the U.S. lost 300 soldiers in defending their position while the North Vietnamese lost more than 1,500 of their own.

This battle served as the U.S.'s first true test of their new air mobility tactics using helicopters to deliver battalion level forces supported by remote artillery and the air force.

This particular story centers on Moore's 7th Cavalry landing at the X-Ray landing zone (about the size of a football field), in which they were surrounded - 360 degrees - by 5 divisions of North Vietnamese hidden underground and in the bush.

The film doesn't lay blame, is not political, and indicates that a true soldier fights to defend his family, no matter how that word is defined.

It's not often that a war film can produce the wide range of emotions (in a good way) as honestly as this one did...

Gone Baby Gone

After seeing The Town recently I decided to screen Ben Affleck's directorial debut, 2007's Gone Baby Gone.

While I'm highly critical of Affleck as an actor, I must admit that he does have talent as a director. The two films that he's directed so far are very home town oriented (Boston) and genre specific (cops and robbers). Whether or not he has an interest in broadening his range as an artist is yet to be seen but both of these films are excellent.

Casey Affleck stars as the private detective in pursuit of the truth here. A major "surprise" occurs towards the end of the film regarding the circumstances of the baby in the title and I, for one, didn't see this coming though probably should have. So, well done to the storytellers involved here...

Is doing the just and honest thing actually better if we know that it will likely produce a worse life for a child? Are we in a position to judge this? Who is right and who is wrong?

These are some of the provocative questions raised with the ending of this film and makes the journey worth it.

In Bruges

After Brussels we travelled on to Bruges, which is just more than an hour away. Bruges is Belgium's answer to Venice. I had visited here perhaps 20 years ago or so and have not been back since.

This was a perfect spot to enjoy a bit of post Valentine's Day bliss...