The World Cup of Cinema - Switzerland

Amateur Teens 

(Screen capture image taken from A Film Company production/ Distributed by Synergetic Distribution)

Switzerland proved to be a rather challenging selection to complete. The first complication stemmed from the fact that several different languages are spoken in the country (mainly French, German and Italian) so it’s not uncommon for actors and actresses from other nations to sneak into Swiss cinema. For this country, confirming the ‘theatrical performer’ portion of my checklist was more frustrating than normal. Take for instance the 2010 film Songs of Love and Hate. This film was shot in Switzerland. Its director Katalin Gödrös was born in Switzerland and, based off what I’ve read, has spent a decent portion of her life living there. But when I got to the cast which included Dutch actor Jeroen Willems and a trio of German actresses; Sarah Horvath, Luisa Sappelt and Mira Elisa Goeres, it suddenly dawned on me that this film wouldn’t work. There is a part of me that really hates excluding a film on the basis of such technicalities and yet I know that if I go ahead and select it, I run the risk of having someone complain ‘hey these people are German, not Swiss’, so either way I can’t win.

The World Cup of Cinema - New Zealand

Black Sheep 

(Screen capture image taken from a Live Stock Films production/ Distributed by Dimension Extreme)

New Zealand was one of those countries that I checked off my list just for the sake of having it done. And why not? After all I felt very confident that they would win the Oceania region. Ever since Australia left they’ve been the heavy favorites to win the confederation, which in this case would have left them one goofy win away from furtively slipping into the World Cup. Maybe in a ‘normal’ world I might have waited to see who would win the region first and then possibly who that team would be paired up with in the inter-continental playoff before choosing to write a critique. But given the delays caused by the pandemic, this just didn’t seem like a good idea.

The World Cup of Cinema - Japan

Seven Samurai 

(Screen capture image taken from a Toho Company production/ Distributed by The Criterion Collection)

Japan was another one of those ‘easy’ countries when it came to completing this project. Not only does the country produce a huge amount of films per year, but a good portion of their work is accessible to people living on the other side of the Pacific. Albeit much like the United States, this is a country where there was so much to choose from that I didn’t even know where to begin. Between the anime work of Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult films of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, the yakuza films of Takeshi Kitano, the sadistic, graphic fare of Takashi Miike, as well as the work of more ‘classic’ auteurs like Yasujirō Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, one doesn’t have to dig too deep into Japanese cinema culture before they’re confronted with an embarrassment of riches. Given how diverse and eclectic its cinema product can be, some may view my selection of Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece as a rather unimaginative, conventional pick.

The World Cup of Cinema - United States

Slacker 

(Screen capture image taken from a Detour FilmProduction film)

A funny thing happened halfway through the completion of this project. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t done a film from my own native country yet. I suppose that this was the consequence of initially focusing on the countries that actually qualified for the 2018 tournament. All kidding aside the fact that our ‘soccer’ team missed that tournament didn’t really bother me, and I refuse to get excessively overdramatic about it. I’m not the type of person who places much significance on the outcome of a sporting match. At the end of the day who wins and losses these games are trifling affairs. The men from our team did the best that they could and even though things didn’t go quite the way that they had hoped, I have no reason not to wish them peace and happiness in life.

The World Cup of Cinema - Hungary

Panelkapcsolat (The Prefab People) 

(Screen capture image taken from a Mafilm production/ Distributed by Facets Video)

I had not given much thought before to how weird it is to execute a process whereby football matches played all over the world would dictate the films that I watch. I always felt a bit conflicted about how to deal with countries that existed on the fringe of being good enough to qualify for the World Cup. One approach was to just be patient and see how they do in the qualifying rounds before making any firm decisions. The biggest advantage to this strategy is that it can save a lot of time and unnecessary hassle. For instance, I actually had a selection in mind for Ireland, even though I hadn’t done much research into how I would go about accessing the film. However after Ireland lost an early qualifying match to Luxembourg, I was able to just … casually take this film off my to-do list and not worry about it. Someday I may watch that film, but in the lead up to the publication of these critiques, I didn’t want to waste time on countries that obviously wouldn’t make it.

The World Cup of Cinema - Portugal

John From 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between O Som E A Fúria and Shellac Sud/ Distributed by Altered Innocence)

I mentioned this briefly in the introduction for the series and I’ll reiterate it here. Portugal turned out to be one of the more troublesome countries when it came to finding a film, and it’s not something that I really anticipated. I came across numerous titles that I thought could’ve been interesting selections and yet too often I would browse their production details on IMDB only to see that there had been no distribution whatsoever to the US. With online streaming options being rather spotty, I made the drastic decision to forgo all of my prior research in order to employ a far more simple if not brute method. I simply went to a library and investigated all of their Portuguese language films to see what was there. Once I sorted out all the Brazilian films, which comprised a significant majority of this set, only a handful of films that actually originated from Portugal itself remained, which included João Nicolau’s second feature film. And no, this wasn’t my initial idea for a Portuguese film. While the following categories may not be completely mutually exclusive, often in this series I don’t watch the films that I want to, but rather the ones that I can.

The World Cup of Cinema - Nigeria

Last Flight to Abuja 

(Screen capture image taken from an Obi Emelonye film/ Distributed by IbakaTV via YouTube)

Given all the research that I’ve conducted so far in this project, Nigeria might have one the strangest film cultures of any country that I’ve ever delved into. According to most sources at one point it was producing more films than any other country in the world, apart from India, and yet some have pointed out that the industry was noted more for its quantity than its quality. Thus no matter how much I learned about films like Living in Bondage, The Wedding Party, or The Figurine, or became aware of directors like Tunde Kelani, Amaka Igwe, or Kenneth Gyang, at the end of the day I felt as if all I had ever really accomplished was to secure a very shallow, cursory knowledge of Nigerian cinema. I can’t escape the notion that beyond this introductory level of self-learning is a sub-culture so vast and so immense that I could easily get lost and never find my way out.

The World Cup of Cinema - Iran

Baran 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Majid Majidi and Fouad Nahas/ Distributed by Buena Vista Home Entertainment)

I'll admit that this choice was a true shot in the dark. Normally I would spend hours online looking for films from a certain country and upon finding potential selections spend additional time researching their production details in order to confirm that they satisfy my inclusion criteria. However in late summer of 2020 I was finally able to enter public libraries again and on one such visit had a passing thought to browse the international film DVDs in order to find a selection for Iran. Browsing through the titles for both the ‘Persian’ and “Farsi’ sections I came across Majid Majidi’s Baran. It wasn’t until I took this DVD home when I conducted my research and realized that I could potentially critique the film for this series. I mean I would have watched the film anyway.

The World Cup of Cinema - Brazil

Um Trem para as Estrelas (Subway to the Stars) 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between CDK Productions and Chrysalide Film)

I'll admit that this was not my initial choice for a Brazilian film. My first choice was a film that was essentially inaccessible without the help of local libraries, all of whom were closed at the time that I wanted to watch it. I suppose I could have waited for them to reopen, but I didn’t know how long it would be before that happened. Focusing on other countries would have been difficult since all the qualification matches for this silly event had been postponed as well. And let’s be honest regardless of how this crazy shit was going to play out, I knew that Brazil would eventually qualify, so it didn’t make any sense to further delay checking them off my list. Should I be criticized for not watching a Brazilian film earlier in this project? Perhaps, but at the time I honestly didn’t think it would matter that much. Going forward I’m going to have to hone my skill at anticipating global catastrophes which cause the fabric of society to fall apart at the seams. 

The World Cup of Cinema - Spain

Mientras Duermes (Sleep Tight) 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Mientras Duermes and Castelao Pictures/ Distributed by TubiTV)

This was yet another film that I had watched before. I don’t know if I should be criticized for selecting so many films that I had already seen, but ultimately I had to write well over 30 of these things and it was probably best to save some of my energy towards research for, … ‘later’ entries in this series. MPI Media Group secured the US rights and gave the film a limited theatrical run in October of 2012. Three months later MPI released the film on DVD and Blu-Ray through its horror film subsidiary Dark Sky Films. The film can also be streamed on a number of different platforms including Amazon Prime, Tubi, Vudu, Kanopy and more.

The World Cup of Cinema - Germany

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) 

(Screen capture image taken from a Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion film/ Distributed by Buena Vista International)

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s debut feature was another film that I had watched before. Sony Pictures Classics picked up the US distribution for this film in 2007 and gave it a 7 month run in theaters. After the conclusion of this run, Sony released the film on DVD and Blue-Ray. Finding a DVD copy wasn’t difficult. For the Sony release, a copy was being held at 30 public libraries within a 20 mile radius of where I live. And that was out of a total of 1566 holdings worldwide that were listed on worldcat.org. The film can also be watched on Amazon Prime, or rented out from Facets. If you’re inclined to simply purchase the DVD, that’s also fairly easy to do. I saw copies of this being sold on eBay for as little as two bucks.

The World Cup of Cinema - Senegal

Touki Bouki (Journey of the Hyena) 

(Screen capture image taken from a Cinegrit production/ Distributed by The Criterion Channel)

Thanks to the World Cinema Foundation, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 feature was restored in 2008 and later included in the first edition of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project released by the Criterion Collection in 2013. Prior to this restoration it had previously been released by Kino On Video in 2005. I honestly couldn’t find much information on any possible ‘theatrical activity’ for the film. I’ll assume that apart from the usual suspects of film festivals and special one-off showings, it’s never been shown in US theaters. Despite the best intentions of Criterion, Scorsese, and others this is still a Senegalese film from the early 1970s and thus it’s not a particularly easy DVD to find. Any copies that one can find online won’t come cheap. I did run across one website that was selling a copy of the Kino On Video release for $40, and given how rare this particular edition is, that’s not a bad price. Criterion are still selling the Blue-Ray/DVD combo box set of the World Cinema Project for $100 on their website, and when you consider that it would include this film and 5 others, it’s not a bad deal. Granted cheaper options may be found on sites like Amazon, plus one can also rent it out from Facets. Criterion will also allow you to stream the film online at their website, with access costing at the very least $11/month.

The World Cup of Cinema - Argentina

Tan de repente (Suddenly) 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Lita Stantic Productions and Nylon Cine/ Distributed by Empire Pictures)

When I first devised the concept for this project there where certain films that immediately came to mind as possible selections for certain countries. When it came to Argentina, Diego Lerman’s 2002 feature was the first film that I thought about. Part of the reason for this was due to the fact that I had actually checked this film out from a library once before and had liked it enough to consider watching it again. Thus, this will represent the first time in the series where I chose to revisit a film before writing a critique of it.

The World Cup of Cinema - Denmark

Festen (The Celebration) 

(Screen capture image taken from a Nimbus Film production/ Distributed by Universal Studios Home Entertainment)

I first learned about this film from the documentary Side By Side, which I once watched due to pure chance. It’s not hard to understand why Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 feature was referenced in a movie that delved into the film-making process, given its status as the first film to be released under the much heralded Danish movement ‘Dogme 95’. Not long after it was produced the film had a decent theatrical run in the United States which lasted for about 5 months. Universal acquired the home media rights in the US and released the film on DVD in 2004. I suspect that due to the film’s slight historical significance, it was not difficult to find a DVD copy a decade and a half later.

The World Cup of Cinema - South Korea

Miss Baek 

(Screen capture image taken from a Bae Pictures production/ Distributed by Little Big Pictures via Rakuten Viki)

To my knowledge, Ji-won Lee’s only directorial effort to date has never appeared in American theaters apart from festivals and one-off showings. Although this is a fairly recent selection having initially premiered in its native South Korea in October of 2018. At the time that I initially wrote this Japan was the other only country where it garnered a wide theatrical release and I doubt that any other country will follow suit. But then again who needs movie theaters when you have the Internet? The film is currently available on Amazon Prime, Tubi, Plex and the Rakuten Viki site. There may be other sites, but the Internet is too vast for me to list them all. Plus ‘less legitimate’ sources for online streaming tend to come and go erratically, so if you wish to watch this elsewhere you’re on your own. Back when I first searched for a way to watch this film, the Viki site was allowing people to watch this title completely free without having to create an account to login with. This is what I would prefer when it comes to online streaming; access that’s very direct, simple and hassle-free, albeit with regards to the Viki site it did come with one major caveat; advertisements.

The World Cup of Cinema - Mexico

Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Fondo de Inversión y Estimulos al Cine (FIDECINE) and Canana Films/ Distributed by MPI Home Video)

Even from the perspective of eclectic American cinephiles Gerardo Naranjo’s 2008 feature is not well known. IFC Films secured the rights for theatrical distribution in the US, but apart from a few festivals and possible one-off showings it’s never appeared in American theaters. Granted IFC Films over the years has acquired quite a strange and diverse collection of films, many of which are not marketed very intensely. When I first started to write this critique, I went to the IFC Films Wikipedia page where it listed all of its releases, and this film didn’t even have a link to its own dedicated page, which subtly conveyed its level of obscurity.

The World Cup of Cinema - Costa Rica

Viaje 

(Screen capture image taken from a Temporal Films production/ Distributed by Mosaico Films via Amazon Prime)

Once you proceed a certain distance into a project like this you have to consider the limits and parameters of how far you’re willing to go in order to achieve completion. For instance I didn’t really want to travel outside of my native Illinois in order to do this, and in a world where the Internet exists I shouldn’t have to. I also wanted to minimize the amount of money that I would need to spend in order to access these films. Achieving this latter aim would require spending a great deal of time in libraries, looking up movies on worldcat.org, researching various distribution companies and film institutes, and poking around a sundry of dodgy websites looking for any accessible online and download possibilities that I could find. I accepted that I would have to do all of this. What I didn’t expect was any measure of dependence on commercial digital providers like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime. It’s not that I don’t like some of these companies, nor the fact that I’m a bit of a cheapskate (well to be fair, that’s part of the reason), but rather because these services mainly offer access to films from countries that already have a good portion of their cinematic output available on DVD and thus it wouldn’t be necessary to rely on them. Countries like Costa Rica made me think otherwise.

The World Cup of Cinema - England

Life is Sweet 

(Screen capture image taken from a Channel Four Television Company production/ Distributed by The Criterion Collection)

My first exposure to this film was a cable-television broadcast in the early 1990s. While I was initially intrigued with what I saw, I can’t remember if I actually watched the entire film. In all likelihood I caught this broadcast at the sudden end to a frantic session of channel surfing. I must admit that at times television has been an important resource for broadening my cinematic tastes and knowledge, even though the medium does suffer from some disadvantages in this aim. First, films have to navigate certain cultural and censorship filters in order to appear on TV, and even then they are probably being broadcast as part of a corporate marketing strategy. TV is also filled to the brim with countless channels and operates on a schedule of its own choosing, rendering the practice of finding a film that you don’t yet know that you like until you start watching it, as both limited and impossible to foresee. And that’s to say nothing about the presence of pure chance in such a process. With channel surfing, it is the brief glimpses of a film that have to grab your attention. It requires fortuitous timing to work.

The World Cup of Cinema - Croatia

Šuma Summarum (Forest Creatures) 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Kinorama and Propeler Film)

One of my aims in writing these intros is offer some back story on a film’s journey as an economic commodity, which I base solely on the research that I conduct. I never had any expectation that this would necessarily be an easy thing to accomplish. Here’s what I know so far about Ivan-Goran Vitez’s 2010 feature. According to Imdb.com, the film was shown at a Croatian film festival in the summer of 2010. According to the website cineuropa.org¹ it had a release date of Nov. 19th later that same year. Whether or not it got released in theaters beyond Croatia, I couldn’t tell you. Among the 2 user reviews on IMDB, one of them tells the tale of a film that fell out of favor with the some of their financiers, who then pulled the funding for the project. This apparently left the film orphaned before it approached the theatrical film market, relegating it to a fate where it was just another film that entered and briefly exited the collective cultural landscape with little fanfare or impact.

The World Cup of Cinema - Greece

Attenberg 

(Screen capture image taken from a Haos Film production/ Distributed by Strand Releasing)

I should probably start this critique with a disclaimer. I ended up writing about films from more countries than just the ones that qualified for the World Cup. About halfway through this project I decided to just publish everything that I wrote. It didn’t make sense to let anything go to waste, so occasionally you may encounter some ‘outcasts’ within this series.

As for Athina Rachel Tsangari’s second feature film, it first appeared in US theaters -while on the festival circuit back in 2011, and was apparently intriguing enough to get a distribution deal with Strand Releasing. Strand gave the film a limited theatrical run in the US during the spring of 2012, which would last about 3 months and which never got shown on more than 2 screens. Later that summer, Strand released a DVD version of the film, which effectively made the film accessible to Americans who don’t live anywhere close to New York City, because that’s how things work in my country.

The World Cup of Cinema - France

À Nos Amours 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Gaumont, Les Films du Livradois and France 3/ Distributed by The Criterion Collection)

To my knowledge this film was never officially distributed to theaters in the United States. A couple of film festivals in the US selected it to be screened back in the 1980s, not long after the film was produced, but apart from this the only avenue to see this film in America was to explore the independent and/or art-house cinema route. The film was never even available on DVD in the US until 2006 when Criterion acquired the distribution rights and released a 2-disc set which featured numerous extras. Given how many Criterion titles that I see among the stacks of my local libraries I didn’t think it would be too hard to find. I perhaps too easily overlooked the fact that the film waited over 20 years to get the Criterion treatment.

The World Cup of Cinema - Belgium

Le Fils (The Son) 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Les Films Du Fleuve, Archipel 35, and Radio Télévision Belge Francophone / Distributed by New Yorker Films)

Within the United States, the Dardenne brothers’ first directorial effort of the 21st century was initially shown in New York City theaters back in January of 2003 and to its credit stayed there for roughly a year. Granted it never played in more than 3 theaters at a time and its likely that no American screenings have occurred outside of NYC apart from film festivals and one-off film society screenings. According to the DVD rental operation Facets (which is based in Chicago), this is considered one of their rare titles. It’s a distinction that I suspect the film has garnered as a result of securing US distribution through New Yorker Films long before this distributor started to incur financial difficulties. New Yorker Films went bankrupt in 2009 and ceased all business operations, only to be revived from its coma a year later when Aladdin Distribution purchased the company and its assets. Currently New Yorker Films seems to exist in a semi-dormant state.

The World Cup of Cinema - Introduction

The concept for this project was very simple. My aim was to watch and critique a film from every country that is competing in this year’s World Cup of association football. While conceptually this project may seem simple, in regards to its’ execution it was anything but. A great deal of thought, research and planning was required to complete this project and trust me finishing it was far more difficult than starting it. Probably the first issue that I had to confront was determining what would make a film identifiable with a certain country. For this project, I preferred to watch a film that was directed by a person (or persons) from the featured country, so that the film that I select would represent the vision and ambition of a native citizen. I also preferred a film that was shot in the featured country, so that I could see the country itself while watching the film. I also desired films were the cast of performers were largely comprised from the featured country, so that its’ own acting talent was put on display. With this last qualification I wasn’t so strict as to require the entire cast to be from a given country, because honestly this would probably make the project nearly impossible to pull off. Granted I still preferred films where the leads and prominent characters were predominately played by performers from the featured country.

Beyond this though there were still a number of potential issues that I had to deal with at the onset of this project. Below is a list of such conundrums, in the order in which they occurred: