Movie Magazine International Blog

By Moira Sullivan “These are the Rules” by Ognien Svilicic The Venice Film Festival, which ended on September 6, screened an exceptional film in the Orrizzonti section: “These are the Rules” by Ognien Svilicic, a Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian co-production. Set in modern day Zagreb, the film is about a middle age couple, Maja and Ivo (brilliantly performed by J asna Žalica and Emir Hadžihafizbegović )  whose teenage son Tomica (Hrvoje Vladisavljević) returns home early in the morning and locks himself in his room. The couple is routinized. but not without affection towards one another and certainly towards their son. Ivo is a bus driver and Maja, a housewife. They go through the daily rituals such as preparing lunch - cutting vegetables and setting the table even with this new development preoccupying their minds. Knocks on Tomica’s door are in vain when finally he emerges clearly pretty beaten up in the face. His concerned parents take him to the emergency room and ...

By Moira Sullivan Typical Roy Andersson mis en scène The big news from the "Venice Film Festival" that ended on September 6 is that Sweden’s best arthouse filmmaker after the late Ingmar Bergman, Roy Andersson    won the Golden Lion for his film A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence . It comprises 39 separate but thematically connected sketches on two traveling salesmen and   is part of a trilogy of films that began with   his grand prize at Cannes in 2000 (Songs from the Second Floor). After that Andersson was hard at work again crafting a by now clearly recognizable product as far as form and content is concerned. “You, the living” (2008) was made seven years after his Cannes award and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence completes the trilogy. Andersson’s work is so completely different from anything that directors in Sweden are producing today that he is comfortably in a class of his own. His feature films follow the same ...