PURE SOULS AGAINST DISTRESSING CIRCUMSTANCES

«Gerlah» by Alena van der Horst and Luuk Bouwman

IDFA: AWARDS

     Armenian film “1489”  - the main prize of the full-length international competition. It's a private emotional story, based on personal experiences. Shogohat Vardanyan'  a debut. She mourns her deceased brother and films her family everyday life during the escalation of the military conflict with Azerbaijan.

     Very personal statements – that's probably IDFA-2023 center of interests.The main award in the second competition (Envision) - “The Metamorphosis of Canuto” by Ariel Quaray Ortega and Ernesto de Carvalho. Arriving to visit his grandfather in a Brazilian province, Ortega hears a story about a peasant who turned into a jaguar and died tragically in the forest. The reconstruction of this myth becomes the plot of the film in film, balancing between mystical realism and the  mockumentary parody.

    The prize for best Dutch film – «Gerlah» by Alena van der Horst and Luuk Bouwman. About a farmer who created a “potato paradise” in Amsterdam suburbs. He sells his products to locals, but he is driven mostly by stoic philosophy. He's tormented by constant rheumatic pain, but he never stops to work at his land and to speak about it.  It looks, it's a real documentary masterpiece – as each scene is aboslutely  meaningful in its composition as well as composition as a whole. By all means we are starting to think about anonymos potato people immortalized by Vincent van Gogh. Through sadness and anecdotes, told by Gerlah, we see beautiful and a bit comic and mostly tragic  eternity of potato gatherers. The shots invented by the directors and filmed by cameraman are full with universal harmony, which reminds the landscapes, portraits  and genre paintings of old masters. And there is no specially designed stylization – just a flow of narration: tender and simple and philosophique. The previous film of the director was also about a person, who walked alone and persistently along his path of life. Back to Gerlah: the demons of capitalist globalization - distribution centers, megamarkets, McDonald  -  fly over Gerlach like hellish monsters. And his pure soul, unfortunately, cannot scare them away.