So here's the thing,
For as long as I've been going, the film festival has always been a fixture of the July calendar. So many of my memories of the festival are marked by walking out of a film into a bitterly cold Wellington winter wind. So it was a surprise when it was announced that this year the festival would be taking place in November. The theory was that the delay would allow time for the population to be vaccinated, in order to minimise the likelihood of the festival being affected by a lockdown. After the disappointment of last year's largely online festival, the hope was that this year we could enjoy a fully in-person festival with packed cinemas.
Yeah, that didn't happen.
Ironically, had the festival taken place at the normal time, it would have run unaffected - at least in the main centres. In July, the entire country was open, with no limitation on numbers (indeed, that month, I was in Auckland for a sold-out performance of The Lion King with thousands of other people). However, a few weeks later, a Covid outbreak in Auckland saw the entire country go into lockdown, and while most of the country is now open-ish, the continuing lockdown in Auckland has seen their film festival cancelled, while the festival for the rest of us is severely affected by number limitations and the need for social distancing. And frankly, I'm still skeptical that the festival will take place at all - we do still have a couple of weeks where things could change and force the cancellation of the festival. But at the moment, I'm hoping that won't happen - and so on that basis, on Wednesday I got ready as usual to buy my festival tickets.
They were due to go on sale at 10am, so at 9:30 I load up the webpage so that I can be ready. To my surprise tickets were already available for purchase. So, I hurriedly select all of my films, at which point the system tells me that it can't process my order because I'm purchasing more than 20 tickets. OK, that's fine, I break it up into two orders, using two different browsers. The browser purchasing the first half of my order got hung up on one title, sticking at "19 out of 20", but the browser processing the second half of my order went fine, and I even got past the stage of making payment, before the system told me that it had closed. OK, that's fine, I knew I was being a bit cheeky, and the tickets weren't supposed to be on sale yet; I'll need a refund, but they'll be busy right now, so I will talk to them about that later in the day.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks past 10, 10.15, and then finally they put a banner on the screen advising that there's been a delay, and tickets will be on sale as soon as possible. After a while, someone calls me about my refund, and happens to mention that tickets will go on sale at 11am.
Sure enough, tickets go on sale shortly after 11, and I started frantically ordering again. And the second half of my order went through seamlessly - although a big part of the seamlessness is probably due to my decision to not bother with using seat selection, since the number of seats was so limited that I decided I had to just accept what they gave me for fear of missing out. But once again, the front half of my order kept hanging on one film, and I didn't know which film. So I decide to divide the remaining films in half and go again. By this point, the opening night film, The Power of the Dog, was sold out - that was probably the cause of the problem. (The loss of that film wasn't a big deal for me - it is due to go on general release during the festival, so I'll get to see it elsewhere.) But once again, the back half of my order goes through, while the front half gets stuck on one film. By this point, I start ordering my remaining movies one day at a time, and once I discover the problem lies with one of the films on the opening Saturday, buying tickets movie-by-movie.
Which is how I realised that the cause of my ordering problems was a film called After Love. The system just would not let me purchase that ticket. (Indeed, its now been five days since tickets went on sale, and they've now simply shut off website bookings to that session because they cannot fix the issue.) The annoying thing is that that was one of my marginal titles to begin with, and had I not selected it, my ordering process would probably have been fairly smooth and straightforward. As it is, it probably stopped me from getting tickets to that opening night film, and definitely meant I got much worse seats to some of the more popular films then I would otherwise have had. Oh well; such is life.
It's a comparatively light festival for me this year, only 34 films - and that's assuming I gets tickets to the film I haven't yet been able to get tickets for - although as usual there were a lot of films I had to abandon any hope of seeing due to irreconcilable clashes with other screenings.
* Riders of Justice
* Censor
* After Love (assuming I ever get to buy a ticket)
* Beau Travail
* The French Dispatch
* The Innocents
* Mass
* The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
* Hit the Road
* The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson
* Bergman Island
* John and the Hole
* Sun Children
* Zola
* Flowers of Shanghai
* Quo Vadis, Aida?
* The Hand of God
* Cryptozoo
* A Hero
* Blue Bayou
* Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
* Nitram
* Unclenching the Fists
* Millie Lies Low
* Memoria
* Shiva Baby
* Midnight
* About Endlessness
* Undine
* Paris, 13th District
* Written on the Wind
* Apples
* One Second
* Titane
One of the first films announced for the festival was one of the titles I was most hoping for: Zola. the adaptation of a viral Twitter thread in which a stripper told the story of how her working trip to Florida went bad. After the film was announced, I read the thread out of curiosity, and it's quite a story, and given the high praise the film has elicited, I'm hoping for a great movie. And it has Riley Keough as one of the leads, which is always a plus.
In the same way that I didn't need to worry too much about missing out on The Power of the Dog, I probably didn't need to worry too much about catching The French Dispatch, since that is also due for release during the festival period. But I love Wes Anderson, and this is one title that has been delayed a year, so I just need to see it as soon as possible.
As I was looking through the programme, I saw a single image from About Endlessness, instantly realised "Oh, I guess Roy Andersson has a new film," and that made me excited. Andersson has an instantly recognisable visual style, possibly even more distinctive than Wes Anderson, so much so that a single frame can identify his work. But it's not that I'm excited by drab grey photography - I enjoy the way he sets up these little scenes that play out in front of the camera with a minimum of intervention, and them uses them for absurdist and melancholic humour.
I adored Julia Ducournau's first film Raw, an impressive horror film about a vegetarian veterinary student who develops a taste for human flesh, so was intrigued when her follow-up Titane won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Every time I heard anyone mention the film, they always started by saying to not know anything about the film, so I've deliberately avoided reading anything about it, not even the write-up in the programme. I have no idea what to expect from the film, but I am expecting it to be something.
I'm not expecting to enjoy Mass, a four-hander about a meeting between two sets of parents where one son killed the others', but it has an excellent cast, and the critical response has been strong, so I'm hoping for something thoughtful and challenging.
A number of critics I respect have heavily praised Censor, a horror film revolving around the UK video nasties of the 1980s, which does sound like a great idea for a film.
It's always a thrill to see a new Zhang Yimou film at the Embassy - the man is a master of visual artistry. I've been keeping an eye on the news of One Second ever since China pulled it just before its premiere, and while the film we'll be getting will no doubt have been subject to censorship by the country, any Yimou is exciting.
While I had issues with the most recent films of Christian Petzold and Paulo Sorrentino, they are significant cinematic figures, so I'm certainly excited to give Undine and The Hand of God a chance.
The work of Jafar Panahi is always a must-see, and so I was intrigued to hear Hit the Road, the first film from his son Panah Panahi, was so well received. Hopefully he's inherited some of his father's mastery.
The classic film selection allows me to tick off a number of titles I've heard about but have never seen and probably would never have got around to otherwise - Beau Trevail, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Flowers of Shanghai, and Written on the Wind.
And then there are just the titles that sound intriguing. I'm always a sucker for a Korean thriller, and the idea of a serial killer hunting a deaf girl (Midnight) seems fun. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, a one-take film with a guy getting video messages from two minutes in the future, sounds like a delight. A bunch of Iranian street children teaming together to steal from a charity (Sun Children); a revenge thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen (Riders of Justice); a world experiencing a pandemic of amnesia (Apples) - these all sound like fascinating films that I might otherwise never get to see.
All in all, despite my reduced number of movies this year compared to the past few years, it still looks like a very promising festival, and I'm excited for it.
Assuming it all still goes ahead, that is.
