Wednesday, 21 October 2020

FILM REVIEW: International Films #3 - Bolton Film Festival


Two more short film in the 'International', category from this year's Bolton Film Festival.

1. Dawn (Aube) - Belgium - Dir: Valentine Lapiere


A 14 year old girl has been sent to a juvenile correction centre and finds life very difficult there and has difficulty adjusting to the scrict regimes and the other inmates. 

It is a very realistic and sympathetic expose of the life of a young offender. Life is at best, unfair; but she is the product of a system that has failed her, and now she is at the mercy of that same failed system.

Anouk Rubens plays the lead role of Aube (Dawn in the English version) with unerring and unnerving realism and truth.

2. The Stick (Keppi) - Finland - Dir: Teppo Airaksinen


Finland's Tack Films have come up with this engaging and heartening short about a young 5 year old girl who desperately wants a pet dog, and she goes to extraordinary lengths to try and make her paents buy one. In desperation one day her father tells her that if she takes a stick for a walk four times a day for three weeks he'll buy her a dog.

The stick (Keppi in Finnish) is attached to a long rope and the girl does indeed walk the stick as requested. She grows very attached to the stick and even calls it 'Shaggy'. Nearing the completion date of her task however, the parents are still not going to buy her a dog and in front of her, her dad breaks the stick in two.

There is a nice compromise struck though and the film does end on a more positive note.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 20/10/20 

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