Mediafrequenza Attualità, cultura, sport, spettacolo
BEST ITALIAN FILM: THE PENITENT – A RATIONAL MAN, by Luca Barbareschi
For a film that is not only important and indispensable thanks to its theme of high social value and hot topicality, but also for its excellent cinematographic qualities. A film that keeps viewers glued to their seats for two hours. With thriller atmospheres, the pressing development of the story, a succession of expertly dosed twists. With a meticulous and icastic reconstruction of the protagonist’s social discrimination, as a Jew. Mamet’s screenplay has the precision of a Swiss watch and transmits all the power of its “chiaroscuro” to the film. The staging is prodigious, the narrative structure, of a theatrical nature, is made fluid and flowing by means of refined film shooting techniques. With anthology scenes, such as when the lawyer speaks to the protagonist, a shot in which the camera is initially fixed, and then comes alive to follow the lawyer’s movement tirelessly, circling the two interlocutors. Tight, cultured, passionate and exciting dialogues. Prodigious scenographic system. Classy packaging. Superlative actors, beautifully directed. A very special mention goes to Luca Barbareschi’s monumental performance, his best ever, who materializes in an unsurpassable way a man in one piece, firm in his moral choice and faithful to his convictions, giving back a complex and multifaceted, which enhances a reflection kept fruitfully open.
BEST FOREIGN FILM: ZIELONA GRANICA (GREEN BORDER), by Agnieszka Holland
For the umpteenth masterpiece by Agnieszka Holland, which shines a powerful spotlight on a phenomenon little covered by the international media: that of the policies of the Polish government , which with inhuman practices opposes the entry of desperate migrants from the Belarusian border. Poland intercepts the victims and sends them back to Belarus. Which, in turn, sends them back to Poland and so on, in an interminable, humiliating and degrading ping-pong whose balls are human beings, and sometimes even their corpses. A great film that is a punch in the stomach, a tense and dense black and white, “broken” only by the “green limbo” of the title, which for two and a half hours puts the spectator in a state of anguish, opening at the same time glimpses of truth that they cross – they do – the border, that of accommodating “official communication”. An extraordinary cinematic quality that allows an empathetic and emotional impact of the highest level. A film that confronts us with an excruciating dilemma: “what kind of world are we creating if simple and vital acts of humanity are made illegal by man-made laws?”.
