A still from Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab.Courtesy BFI London Film Festival
The most challenging of times bring us the best art. Or at least, that’s what we tell ourselves, balancing the struggles of the modern era against the hope that something may come of them. This year’s crop of cinematic awards contenders suggests that our current trying times are inspiring varied, far-reaching responses to the quandaries that face us, yet there are thematic echoes resonating through even the most seemingly discordant films. Those themes felt especially poignant at the BFI London Film Festival, one of the final major festivals leading into the push of awards season. After opening with Rian Johnson’s Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man, a cleverly wrought meditation on faith, the 10-day festival showcased a diverse array of storytelling from around the world. At the heart of almost everything were reflections on two ideas: loss and isolation.
Loss manifested most obviously in films like Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet and Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams—tactile and beautiful stories about grief and how we continue to move through the world after the loss of a child (also explored in The Thing With Feathers). Kaouther Ben Hania’s essential film The Voice of Hind Rajab similarly explores the depth of sadness a young person’s death can manifest, but it acts more like a call to arms than a quiet meditation. Based on real events and using real audio, the docudrama depicts the killing of a six-year-old Palestinian girl at the hands of Israeli forces, confronting the viewer with the reality of the war, ceasefire or not. It is a film about what we have lost, but also what we will continue to lose.
Tom Blyth and David Jonsson in Wasteman. Courtesy BFI London Film Festival
Grief isn’t just for people, as several of this year’s films acknowledge. Father Mother Sister Brother, Sentimental Value, High Wire, & Sons and Anemone grapple with the tenuousness of familial relationships, while The Love That Remains, Is This Thing On? and even Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere face dissipating romances head-on. Some, like Bradley Cooper’s effortlessly charming Is This Thing On?, assert the possibility of reconciliation. Perhaps any relationship is worth another shot. Richard Linklater’s slight but compelling Blue Moon reckons with another type of loss: artistic identity. Ethan Hawke plays songwriter Lorenz Hart, mere months before his death, as he accepts his fate as a failure on the evening his former creative partner Richard Rodgers opens the successful Oklahoma!
Hart’s disconnect from Rodgers, the tragic core of Blue Moon, suggests that we may fear isolation even more than loss. Grief is often ephemeral, easing over time, but a lack of human connection can last a lifetime. Hikari’s thoughtful film Rental Family stars Brendan Fraser as an American living in Tokyo, far removed from both his culture and his prior life. He’s alone, which draws him to a job feigning connection for other isolated people. Pillion, a standout of the festival and filmmaker Harry Lighton’s feature debut, suggests that we can only discover real connection once we are honest about who we are and what we want. The film is aided by Harry Melling’s vulnerable performance as a young British gay man who finds solace in a submissive relationship with the leader of a biker gang. We are less far apart than we think, sexual preferences aside.
Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård in Pillion. Courtesy BFI London Film Festival
Isolation isn’t always solved by the presence of someone else, as examined by Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, a confronting look at female mental health. As a postpartum woman with bipolar disorder, Jennifer Lawrence is feral and completely at sea, lost even when she’s with her husband and child. She tries to ground herself with sex, alcohol, and even violence, but she’s so disconnected from herself that there is nothing to hold on to. In The Chronology of Water, Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, Imogen Poots embodies real-life writer Lidia Yuknavitch, who also turns to substances and sex as a way of rooting herself in reality. It doesn’t work, but Lidia eventually finds writing as a means of connection and a way to absolve herself of a traumatic past. In Wasteman, another standout of the festival and the feature debut of British filmmaker Cal McManus, inmates share a forced connection but can only move on from their crimes by standing up for themselves. Shared circumstances may not unite us after all, as McManus explores through his lead character, played by rising actor David Jonsson.
Although Palestinian history and identity were prominently and importantly on display during the festival in The Voice of Hind Rajab, Palestine 36 and Hasan in Gaza, this year saw a distinct lack of overtly political films. It’s not a year for war epics or presidential biopics, but instead for more intimate stories that underscore the idea that the personal is political. Despite being united by the internet and social media, we often feel alone in our struggles and experiences. Films remind us of what we share and why we share it, especially in tumultuous times like these. Loss and isolation impact everyone, everywhere, as so many filmmakers and screenwriters are presently exploring. In the spotlight this awards season are human stories about human emotions and human fears, told in charming and sometimes hauntingly unique ways. As the BFI London Film Festival lineup underscored, this is a particularly good year for cinema. Ideally, it will leave behind a record of a specific thematic moment in modern history—one where we know what there is to lose and we’re willing to face it anyway.
The Gaza humanitarian crisis loomed large at the Venice Film Festival closing ceremony as multiple winners called for an end to the Israeli military campaign in the Palestinian territory.
The situation there has been a hot button topic throughout the 82nd edition of the festival, which unfolded just six weeks shy of the second anniversary of the Hamas terror attacks on Southern Israel on October 7 2023, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in the taking of 251 hostages.
At least 61,000 people living in the Gaza Strip have died in Israel’s subsequent military campaign aimed at wiping out Hamas and recovering the hostages, while aid agencies have warned of a looming “a man-made” famine, with at least 132,000 children under five-years-old expected to suffer from acute malnutrition.
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania was the most outspoken as she received the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize for The Voice of Hind Rajab.
The film about the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was in a car with family members which was fired on by Israeli forces at they tried to flee Gaza City in early 2024, rocked the festival earlier in the week, receiving a record-breaking 23 minutes and 40 second ovations.
“I dedicate this world to the Palestinian Red Crescent and to all those who have risked everything to save lives in Gaza. They are real heroes. The voice of Hind is the voice of Gaza itself, a cry for rescue the entire world could hear, yet no one answered,” said Ben Hania.
“Her voice will continue to echo until accountability is real until justice is served. We all believe in the force of cinema. It’s what gathers us here tonight and what gives us the courage to tell stories that might otherwise be buried. Cinema cannot bring Hind back. Nor can it erase the atrocity committed against her. Nothing can ever restore what was taken,” she continued.
“But cinema can preserve her voice, make it resonate across borders, because her story is not hers alone. It is tragically the story of an entire people enduring genocide inflicted by a criminal Israeli regime that acts with impunity,” she added.
Ben Hania raised the plight of Hind Rajab’s mother Wissam Hamada and brother Eiyad, who remain in Gaza.
“This story is not only about memory it’s about urgency. Their lives remain in danger, as do the lives of countless mothers, fathers and children who wake up every day under the same sky of fear, hunger and bombardment. I urge the leaders of the world to save them. Their survival is not a matter of charity. It is a matter of justice, of humanity, of the minimum that the world owes to them. I also call for an end of this unbearable situation. Enough is enough.”
A number of other winners made similar appeals across the night including Italy’s Toni Servillo, who won Best Actor for his performance in La Grazia; Silent Friend co-star Luna Wedler, who won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor, and Moroccan director Maryam Touzani who won the Audience Award for Calle Malaga.
“The joy I feel is profound but so is the pain I feel as I receive this award today,” said Touzani. “I feel pain because like many others I cannot forget the horror inflicted with such impunity and every second on the people of Gaza and the people of Palestine.”
“As a mother today, I consider myself even more fortunate to simply be able to look at my child as I speak,” continued the director, whose son was in the auditorium.
“For how many mothers have been made childless, how many children have been motherless, fatherless, have lost everything. How many more until this horror is brought to an end. Yes, we wipe our tears and keep going, but we refuse to lose our humanity. I must say I am proud and honored to be part of a festival that has been so engaged.”
In a break with tradition, the ceremony ended with an address from the Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
The Roman Catholic cardinal visited Gaza in July following an Israeli strike on the compound of the parish of the Holy Family, which killed three people and injured nine others, including the parish priest.
He spoke to the auditorium via live-video link from Jerusalem.
“A greeting from Jerusalem, the Holy Land, where we are living such a such a dramatic, difficult and divisive moment. You know the news so I don’t need to go into that, it’s dramatic as are the images of destruction, death and so much pain. One of the problems is that there is so much pain that there is no longer space for the pain of the other,” he said
What I want to say is that we’re living in a climate of deep hate, which is increasingly radical within both the Israeli and Palestinian populations… we see it in the violence, but also in the language… which is having a dehumanizing effect. The war needs to stop and we hope it will end soon… we all need to work to create a different dialogue, different outcomes,” he said.
He called on the world of culture and cinema to also play its part.
“I hope that also from Venice there will be a positive contribution in this sense to help us think in a different way.”
Seriesmakers, a joint initiative of Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV festival, and European film-TV powerhouse Beta Group, has revealed the 10 top-notch project lineup of the second edition of its novel and high-powered mentoring program for filmmakers making their TV creator debut.
This year’s Seriesmakers features in development drama series from Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald (“George Blake”), behind “The Last King Of Scotland,” and from Finnish director Mikko Myllylahti, who burst onto the scene co-writing with Juho Kuosmanen the latter’s “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Makki,” a 2016 Cannes Un Certain Regard winner.
Also in the mix is the highly courtedKaouther Ben Hania, a double Oscar nominee for the “compelling, ambitious hybrid” “Four Daughters,” said Variety, in the doc category and the “The Man Who Sold His Skin” (2020), Tunisia’s entry in international feature.
In all, however, nine of the ten directors winning berths this year round have had titles in either Cannes, Venice and Toronto. The tenth, Hungary’s Hajni Kis whose “Wild Roots” was awarded at Karlovy Vary, is one of Eastern Europe’s most talked up young directors.
Seriesmakers, whose second edition has just wrapped, sees director-producer or director-writer teams closely mentored by experienced and successful drama series creatives while working on their series and developing a full pitch deck.
An online initiative, the caliber of Seriesmakers is seen in its speakers and mentors, many repeating from its inaugural edition.
Returning for its second edition as speakers are “Game of Thrones” triple Emmy Award winning executive producer and director Frank Doelger, also behind “The Swarm”; Israel’s Hagai Levi (“Scenes From A Marriage,” “In Treatment”) and Germany’s Stefan Arndt (“The White Ribbon,” “Babylon Berlin”).
They are joined by Ron Leshem (“Euphoria,” “No Man’s Land”), “Narcos” creator Chris Brancato (“Godfather Of Harlem,” “Pushing Daisies”) and showrunner Bryan Elsley (“Skins”).
Mentors, all repeating, are Germany’s Janine Jackowski, a producer on “Toni Erdmann” and “Spencer”; Israeli writer-script doctor Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, creator of “The Girl From Oslo”; Isabelle Lindberg Pechou, a creative producer on Faroes Noir thriller “Trom”; and Brazil’s Felipe Braga, who forged some of Netflix’s earliest successes in Brazil, creating “Sintonia” and also writing-producing “Lov3.”
A brief breakdown of selected projects:
“Breach,” (director Mijke de Jong; writers Giancarlo Sanchez, Jan Eilander, 4 x 50’, Netherlands)
As unapproachable helmswoman Tisa (35) ferries a crowded boat of wealthy Dutch refugees to Dover, her traumas as a past refugee and her passengers’ prejudices growing, sparking war on board. De Jong returns to the theme of a violent outcome of Western discrimination developed winningly in “Layla M.,” the 2018 Dutch Oscar entry.
“Doctor’s Oath,” (director Mikko Myllylahti, producers Aleksi Hyvärinen and Taneli Mustone, 4×52’, Finland)
Myllylahti made his feature debut as a director with his Cannes Critics’ Week winner “The Woodcutter Story,” mixing the weird and a hangdog humor. He’s now developing “a highly realistic and suspenseful story” about “a side-tracked dermatologist who becomes the face of Finland’s soft approach towards AIDS.”
(L-R) Jan Eilander, Giancarlo Sanchez, Mijke de Jong (“Breach”) David Csicskar, Hajni Kis (“Elephant”)
Courtesy of Beta Group
From Kis, whose “Wild Roots,” a 2022 Hungarian Film Awards best feature winner, marked her out as a director to track, and Csicskár, an experienced TV director, the psychological drama of Anna, 46, a perfect mother and wife, who’s also a functional alcoholic. When she hits the wagon, her life begins to fall apart.
A meta series about a series and critique of the commoditization of radical politics – a reality show set in a high-security prison hoping to spark more rivalry between its radical inmates, but confounded by the jury’s different takes on rehabilitation. The highly courted Ben Hania, a double Oscar nominee, directs. Longtime collaborator Cheikhrouha once more produces.
“George Blake,” (director Kevin Macdonald and producer Femke Wolting, 6×52’, U.K./Netherlands)
“What makes a person turn against everything they ever stood for?” the series description asks. “The untold true story of one of the most prolific double agents of not just the Cold War, but British history, George Blake,” – prolific maybe referring to his betrayal of 400 secret service agents, which he once claimed. A compelling figure, a traitor to most people, whose life was sometimes stranger than fiction and raises questions about identity and U.S. bombing policy in Korea, to name just two. Directed by Kevin Macdonald whose documentary “One Day In September” (1999) won an Oscar while his “The Last King Of Scotland” (2007) took a second Academy Award for best actor (Forest Whitaker).
Kevin Macdonald, Femke Wolting (“George Blake”) Yorgos Zois, Stelios Cotionis (“Play”)
Courtesy of Beta Group
With his second feature “Arcadia” playing in 2024’s Berlin Encounters, Zois is “among a promising generation of emerging Greek filmmakers nurturing their own distinctive, idiosyncratic voices,” said Variety. An eight-part mystery drama, Zois’ “Play” turns on a lonely cinephile who joins a mysterious group of strangers that reenact movie scenes in real life. Picking up on Zois’ 2015 feature debut, “Interruption,” as “Play’s” characters “gradually lose themselves in the hazy realm between reality and fiction,” Variety noted.
“Sleeping Swans,” (director Barbara Albert, writer Ulrike Tony Vahl, producer Martina Haubrich, 8×52’, Germany)
Directed by veteran Albert whose films have screened at Venice (“Nordrand,” 1999), Locarno (“Free Radical,” 2003) and Toronto (“Mademoiselle Paradis,” 2017), in a coastal town in Eastern Germany, children are inexplicably falling into a mysterious condition. Investigating, Ellen Lennardsson discovers a sinister conspiracy encompassing not only the supernatural, but also the darker side of human nature.
Ulrike Tony Vahl, Barbara Albert, Martina Haubrich (“Sleeping Swans”) Erik Matti, Ronald Monteverde (“The Squatter”)
Courtesy of Beta Group
“The Squatter,” (director Erik Matti, producer Ronald Monteverde, 8 x 52, Philippines)
A secretive Filipino maid and dogged Ukrainian detective investigate a dead body in a rural town as the crime unravels who they are. From Matti and Monteverde at their Manila-based Reality MM Studios banner, having broken out to international recognition with the critically acclaimed political crime thriller “On The Job: The Missing 8.”
“The Willow Song,” (writer-director Guy Myhill and writers Tony Phillips and Sophie Vaughan, 8×50’, U.K.)
Winning Venice Days with “The Goob,” Myhill returns with the story of a young Black American GI who arrives in Britain to fight in WWII. He grows politically, falls in love across the race-line “and learns first-hand that his biggest battle is not against Nazi Germany, but the pervasive brutality and bigotry of the U.S Army,” the synopsis states.
“Willz,” (director-writer Amir Manor and director-writer Guy Raz, 10×40’, Israel)
The couriers at food delivery syndicate Willz unite to take on the company by robbing a bank, and exposing its greedy and unscrupulous ways. From Manor, director of Venice Days’ 2012 title “Epilogue,” a moving portrait of old age whose cinematographer, Raz, also writes and directs.
The three winning teams are announced on March 20 in Lille during the Series Mania Forum (March 19-21). Two teams will each receive a €50,000 ($54,500) Beta Development Award and will be working closely with Beta’s Content and Co-Production Division to develop a pilot script and a full package. An additional award of €20,000 ($21,800), courtesy of the Kirch Foundation in collaboration with HFF (University of Television and Film Munich), will be given to a third project.
Amir Manor, Guy Raz (“Willz”) Tony Phillips, Sophie Vaughan, Guy Myhill (“The Willow Song”)
Courtesy of Beta Group
Variety caught up with Laurence Herszberg, Series Mania general director, and Koby Gal Raday, Beta Group chief content officer, to drill down on Seriesmakers’ second edition.
What do you think you got right in what looks like a highly successful first edition of Seriesmakers and what did you continue to get right in the second?
Gal Raday: What really worked was our assumption that we were addressing a market need. There’s a lot of workshops for writers and producers, not so many that are focused on filmmakers, directors, working collectively with writers and producers. The second edition had the same number of submissions, many more from English-speaking countries – the U.K., U.S. and Canada, which dominated applications, even surprising us up to a point, but also from Indonesia, Taiwan, Slovenia, Senegal and Bolivia, from all four corners of the world.
Laurence Herszberg: Also, we had a remarkable level of filmmaker participants, which intrigued speakers. It was very interesting to them to discuss those newcomers to drama series creation with a lot of cinema experience. There a lot of high-level discussion about artistic questions and how you you treat them in cinema and in [TV] fiction. It was really interesting for Hagai Levi, who’s done both film [“August Snow] and TV [“The Affair,” “Be Tipul,” adapted as HBO’s “In Treatment”] to discuss how you write a character in drama series with people who are up there with him as filmmakers but don’t know anything about TV fiction. It’s a profitable dialog for both sides.
And was there any follow-up?
Herszberg: We interviewed participants and conducted surveys and saw they were happy about the more operational masterclasses and hands-on mentorship, and more inspirational sessions from other showrunners or directors who have made the transition themselves. It was that balance that made Seriesmakers so successful.
The series this year, continue to be about something, they might be lighter but they are not popcorn entertainment….
Herszberg: It’s at the core of the festival. The series are about the world. The festival just presents them to audiences and professionals. Also, in a world in so much turmoil, creators try to look in the past or look into the future to address current topics. And the series are very character-driven. But it’s really at the core of TV series in a way. They are very much character driven, but for most of the times they also address a topic. Even if they’re going back to the family, to very intimate subjects, that’s always something more, which series, which have more time to develop characters, allow for more than cinema.
Indeed, best series are often “character-thrillers,” whose key entertainment is to see what happened to them, and why and the ethical implications of that…
Gal Raday: Characters that you can root for and possibly follow for years. That’s the key. Also, notwithstanding the zeitgeist and issue-based dramas, our filmmakers are concerned about ordinary people’s day-to-day lives. Also, there’s a very clear need to cut through the clutter. There are so many series, so the filmmakers are trying to find a unique point of view a very specific artistic vision. Also have to say that if the market were making more comedies, we’d choose more comedies, but that is not the case.
Regarding the selection, last year’s Seriesmakers dealt with gender issues. This year they have practically disappeared. Instead, multiple titles are broadly political, questioning authority, expressing a skepticism about public policy, for example, in “Doctor’s Oath” and its vision of the commoditization of radical activism, or asking about the probity of U.S. military practice, in both “Freedom Academy”·and “George Blake.” Is that coincidental?
Herszberg: Regarding gender issues, we had the same thing at the festival. Last year, we had some titles, this year none. And series have gay characters but they aren’t really LGBT-themed, its just a character, as others are women. The sexuality is not underscored. This year we have strong IP, such as George Blake, just there was a series last year about French tycoon Bernard Tapié, which was hugely successful.
One of Beta Group’s roles at Seriesmakers is to check if series could work on the market. In that regard, what are you looking for?
Gal Raday: You can never really know what will work for the market and what commissioners will be able to commission, their budgetary levels. But [your chances are greater] if you have a very unique access point to the story through characters that are strong enough to root for and a narrative that is compelling enough that you want to follow and develop. All of the examples that you mentioned of projects this year, as well as others and the ones last year are very strong stories.
At a European conference at September’s San Sebastián Festival Beta Group head Jan Mojto remarked that “creating content for a larger than national market is not a question of science, it’s a question of ambition.” Is that something you also look for in order to stand out in the crowd: Artistic ambition.
Gal Raday: That’s a very good point. Seriesmakers’ participants are such prestigious filmmakers that they have a very clear artistic vision. You want to let them freely take it into the world, to package it in a clever way, and bring it to market so that it will cut through the clutter.
As studios pull back in production and acquisition, moving into series affords more opportunities for employment. I suspect, however that that was not the motivation of the filmmakers at Seriesmakers which is more about gaining a larger storytelling flexibility, being able to move from film to TV.
Gal Raday: Yes, moving to series is not for the participants a question of money, but rather the artistic vision of the idea they have in mind. They know they will learn something totally new, totally different skill-sets. And that’s what makes it very exciting.
