Worldly Affairs

"Worldly Affairs" shorts program, Sat. 6/25 1:15p @ Castro, WORL25C

Ron (Yuval Rozman) and
Tal (Avi Kornick) in A Word.
רון (יובל רוזמן) ו טל (אבי קורניק) ב מילה.

A Day in the Country, dir. Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja, 2010, Sweden, 15 min., in Swedish with English subtitles; (not reviewed)
A Word (מילה), dir. Yoav Inbar (יואב ענבר), 2010, Israel, 19 min., in Hebrew with English subtitles 
Lek and the Waterboy, dir. Lasse Nielsen, 2010, Thailand, 8 min., (no dialogue) 
Samaritan (Samaritanen), dir. Magnus Mork, 2010, Norway, 29 min., in English, Norwegian and Kurdish with partial English subtitles 
I Don't Want to Go Back Alone, dir. Daniel Ribeiro, 2010, Brazil, 17 min., in Portuguese with English subtitles; (not reviewed)

[A Day in the Country and I Don't Want to Go Back Alone were not available for press review before the festival screening.]

In A Word (מילה), Ron wrestles with the question of whether his feelings for Tal, or his sister's feelings for her ex, or anyone's feelings for another person, qualify as "Love" with a capital L. Can someone completely separate Love and sex? Will Ron recognize Love if he finds it? We get surprisingly deep into the complications of that one word in Ron's life. Highly recommended.

Lek (Thanet Putthasorn) and the Waterboy

Lek and the Waterboy is the story of a teenaged boy growing up in Thailand, indulging in fantasies of gender and sexuality, particu­lar­ly surrounding the young man who delivers water to Lek's mother's shop. There is no dialogue in the film, with Lek's inner world shown in brief dream sequences. We glimpse the early stages of Lek's journey, leaving us to wonder what joys and tribulations await in what will surely be an interesting life story. Recom­mended.

Terje Tjøme Mossige (Knut) and
Sharam Khalifeh (Mirza) in Samaritanen.

In Samaritan (Samaritanen), Knut (Terje Tjøme Mossige) is leaving work on a Saturday evening when he literally runs into Mirza (Sharam Khalifeh), a hunky Kurdish illegal immigrant. Knut tends to Mirza's scrapes and then invites him home for the night. Mirza sleeps on the sofa, but Knut clearly imagines that they might move much closer, using Norway's same-sex marriage laws to give Mirza a pathway to legal status. The dream begins to unravel almost immediately, though, as the reality diverges from Knut's fantasy. How much of Knut's motivation is an altruistic desire to help a down-on-his-luck immigrant, and how much is an unrequited desire for a fairy tale romance with a happily-ever-after ending? More to the point, can mutual exploitation form the basis for a marriage? Both actors play out the drama without melodrama, providing a window into the tentative approach of two men with reason to be wary. Highly recommended. [Note to the hearing-impaired: the portions of the dialogue in Norwegian and Kurdish are subtitled in English, but most of the film is in English, without subtitles.]