Macondo (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Macondo |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | German , Chechen |
| Publishing year | 2014 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | JMK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Sudabeh Mortezai |
| script | Sudabeh Mortezai |
| production |
Oliver Neumann , Sabine Moser |
| music | Atanas Tcholakov |
| camera | Klemens Hufnagl |
| cut | Oliver Neumann |
| occupation | |
| |
Macondo is the first feature film by the Iranian-Austrian director Sudabeh Mortezai . The film, which was produced by the Austrian production company Freibeuterfilm , is about an eleven-year-old boy named Ramasan, who lost his father in the Chechnya war and lives with his family in a remote housing estate in Vienna. The film was shown in the competition at the Berlin International Film Festival 2014 and at numerous other festivals. In Austria, the film was released on November 14, 2014.
action
The location of the film is the refugee settlement “Macondo”, which is located in an industrial area on the outskirts of Vienna in the 11th district of Simmering . It is estimated that between 2000 and 3000 people from 22 countries live there.
So does the eleven-year-old Chechen boy Ramasan, the protagonist of the film, who grows up alone with his mother Aminat and his two younger siblings under difficult circumstances. Because the father died in the war and he is the eldest son, Ramasan has a lot of responsibility for the family. While his mother is at work, he looks after his two little sisters or does the shopping. He also has to support his mother as a translator when dealing with important authorities. The family has not yet received a positive answer to their asylum application.
One day Isa, a former war comrade of the dead father, moves into the housing estate. He gives Ramasan a family photo and his father's watch. Ramasan curiously observes the sympathetic newcomer and questions him. He soon finds out that his father wasn't the war hero he always thought he was. Gradually a close relationship develops between Isa and Ramasan, "but when Aminat begins to be interested in Isa, an emotional conflict begins for Ramasan" . He feels threatened and suddenly sees Isa as a rival. Although Isa is sympathetic to him, Ramasan takes all his anger out on him.
The situation reached a dramatic climax when Ramasan was accused one day of breaking into a dredging park that night. In front of the police officers, Ramasan simply claims that Isa incited him and his friends to break in. Only when Isa is taken away by the police does Ramasan understand what he has done. Full of remorse, he only waits for Isa to come back and forgive him.
background
Macondo is the first feature film by Sudabeh Mortezai after the two documentaries Children of the Prophet (2006) and In the Bazaar of the Sexes (2009) . The director won the Thomas Pluch Special Prize in 2014 for her screenplay . The jury found the great strength of her book that she describes a world that she seems to know very well.
The film is deliberately characterized by a documentary style. The action is set in a real setting, a former kuk barracks in Kaiserebersdorf, which has housed refugees from various countries since the mid-1950s. This unusual place "between waste disposal companies, motorway bridge and allotment gardens" was named "Macondo" by Chilean refugees living there.
To tell her story, Sudabeh Mortezai worked with amateur actors: “I wasn't looking for actors, I was looking for 'normal' people. There were a few other boys on the shortlist, Ramasan was very small, very tender, incredibly cheeky and at the same time very sensitive. [...] He had this ambivalence right away, which this role demanded in many ways: between childhood and adulthood, between head of the family, son and brother. "
Sudabeh Mortezai describes her way of working on this film as very intuitive, as she let the actors improvise a lot. Although she stuck to the dramaturgical arc within the script, she didn't want the actors to learn dialogues by heart: “None of the actors has ever seen a script or learned a text. [...] There was no rehearsal. We filmed right away. Often the first take was the best […]. ” In designing the film, the director was also inspired by the immediacy that the documentary provides: “ Macondo was also an experiment for me to develop a method for fictional material develop and I would like to continue working here because I can keep so many things that I love in documentary work, and a. the spontaneity and authenticity of the characters, the fact that nothing is played. My characters live in front of the camera, even if it's not exactly their story. "
The director stages her film in calm images from the perspective of Ramasan and shows how he copes with everyday life in Macondo and his family obligations. The camera always stays at eye level with the young hero, who is in a painful process of growing up.
criticism
The film was very well received by the public and received very good reviews. The Austrian daily Die Presse wrote that Sudabeh Mortezais had made a “brilliant breakthrough” with her feature film debut . The film service spoke of a “great debut film” . The film takes "a lot of time to observe the boy's everyday life and life in Macondo" , but is "only marginally [...] a portrait of the milieu" .
Dominik Kamalzadeh emphasized in the newspaper Der Standard that the film "happily did not come to a head in a dramatic escalation [...]" . Mortezai does not play down the precarious "family situation" and "hardly force stereotypes" . Instead, the film prefers "descriptive observations that leave space for the characters and one or the other contradiction" .
Awards
Macondo celebrated its world premiere in the competition of the 64th Berlinale and has since been nominated and awarded at numerous international film festivals. The film won, among other things, the Firebird Award at the 38th Hong Kong International Film Festival and the CICAE Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival 2014. During its Austrian premiere at the Viennale , the film was awarded the Vienna Film Prize 2014 as the best feature film . For his acting performance, the young leading actor in the film was honored as Best Actor at the Festival International du Film des Femmes de Salé in Morocco .
The following is a list of the awards:
- 2014: Wiener Filmpreis 2014, Viennale - Best Fiction Film .
- 2014: Erste Bank MehrWERT Film Prize, Viennale.
- 2014: Sarajevo Film Festival - Award of the International Confederation of Art Cinemas ( CICAE ).
- 2014: 38th Hong Kong International Film Festival, Young Cinema Competition - Main Prize Firebird Award .
- 2014: Scarborough Film Festival in Toronto, Canada - Outstanding Directorial Achievement Award .
- 2014: Festival del Cinema Europeo in Lecce, Italy - Cineuropa Award and Best Screenplay .
- 2014: Thomas Pluch Screenplay Award - Special Award .
- 2014: Cinergia Film Festival in Lodz, Poland - Best European Debut .
- 2014: Festival International du Film de Femmes de Salé, Morocco - Best Actor : Ramasan Minkailov.
- 2015: Diagonale Prize for innovative production performance
At the Austrian Film Prize 2015 , Macondo was nominated in five categories (including Best Film ), but could not win any award.
As part of the Eine Stadt. A film , a cooperation between the municipality of Vienna and echo medienhaus, in which a high-quality film from Austrian production is presented to the broadest possible audience once a year, Macondo was shown on March 25, 2015 with free entry in twelve Viennese cinemas.
Web links
- Official page for the film
- Macondo in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Film data sheet of the Berlinale
- Entry at the Austrian Film Institute
Individual evidence
- ↑ Age rating for Macondo . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Release Info. Internet Movie Database , accessed November 21, 2014 .
- ↑ Niederndorfer, Florian; Wolf, Theresia: The city that doesn't exist (Falter 16/09) at www.falter.at, accessed on November 17, 2014.
- ↑ Macondo - brief content at www.macondo.at, accessed on November 18, 2014.
- ↑ Thomas Pluch Screenplay Awards 2014 ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.diagonale.at, accessed on November 19, 2014.
- ^ Asylum in Austria (April 2013) at www.demokratiezentrum.org, accessed on November 19, 2014.
- ↑ a b c Interview by Karin Schiefer with Sudabeh Mortezai: My characters live in front of the camera, even if it's not exactly their story ( memento of the original from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (July 2013 / February 2014) at www.afc.at, accessed on November 19, 2014.
- ↑ Köksal Baltaci: Sudabeh Mortezais fulminant breakthrough. Die Presse , November 7, 2014, accessed on November 21, 2014 .
- ↑ fk: Macondo. (No longer available online.) Film service , archived from the original on November 29, 2014 ; accessed on November 21, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Dominik Kamalzadeh: Award-winning feature film “Macondo”: A burden, this responsibility. Der Standard , November 11, 2014, accessed November 21, 2014 .
- ↑ Nominations for the Austrian Film Prize 2015. Austrian Film Academy , accessed on January 28, 2015 .
- ↑ Austrian Film Prize 2015 . Accessed January 29, 2015.
- ↑ A city. A 2015 film ( Memento of the original from February 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
