NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2018 (March 28–April 8, 2018)

[Chris Knipp]

UNTIL THE BIRDS RETURN/EN ATTENDANT LES HIRONDELLES (Karim Moussaoui 2017)

An accomplished and sophisticated first feature reps three quite separate short stories, really, all set in Algeria, about a property developer whose son and daughter are drifting away, a couple of secret lovers on the road, and a respectable doctor accused of complicity in a mass rape during the revolution. Featured in last May's Cannes Un Certain Regard.

CLOSENESS/TESNOTA (Kantemir Balagov 2017)

Academy ratio, intensified color, and intense closeups mark this study of a Jewish family in Nineties Russia who experience a kidnapping and decide to move on again. Much, well, closeness. Also in Cannes Un Certain Regard.

SCARY MOTHER /SASHISHI DEDA (Ana Urushadze 2018)

A first feature from Georgia with an unusual, semi-surreal subject of a fifty-year-old mother of a regular middle class family who indulges a long repressed urge to become a writer. Her 150-page manuscript is greeted as deranged pornography, except by her friend and champion, who runs a stationary store. Does creativity just seem like madness to ordinary people? The adroit narrative structure at times takes on the quality of a thriller.