Mozambique war-time Western wins at Tunisia film fest
Hot-button topics avoided as Academy toasts cinema legends
TUNIS, Nov 13, (Agencies): The story of an epic train journey across war-torn Mozambique by a Brazilian director has been awarded the top prize at Tunisia’s Carthage Film Festival.
“The Train of Salt and Sugar” by Licinio Azevedo, a Brazilian who lives in the African country, received the Tanit d’Or as the festival wrapped up on Saturday.
Like a Western, the film follows the perilous journey of a train that sets off across rebel-held areas to exchange salt for sugar in 1989 during Mozambique’s civil war.
The Tanit d’Argent went to South Africa’s John Trengove for his first feature “The Wound”, which has sparked controversy at home over its portrayal of homosexual love and an ancestral initiation rite.
Veteran Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaidi received the Tanit de Bronze for “Volubilis”, a social critique of extreme liberalism.
Among the documentaries, the jury awarded Palestinian director Raed Andoni’s “Ghost Hunting”, which recreates a notorious Israeli interrogation centre and has former prisoners re-enact experiences in a bid to free them of their demons.
Frank
Third place went to Nada Mezni Hafaiedh’s “Upon the shadow”, a frank documentary about the lives of gay Tunisians in a country where homosexuality is a crime.
Hafeidh said she was “surprised there were so few complaints” after her documentary’s screening in its home country on Friday.
She said she was astonished her film had been selected for the festival at all, enabling Tunisians to see it, “because I know that sadly in Tunisia being gay is an abomination”.
As awards season launches underneath a shadow for the second year in a row, Oscar contenders aplenty turned out to salute four cinema legends and a bold work of immersive art Saturday night.
But the current headline-making ills plaguing the industry failed to creep into an evening dedicated to celebration. Gary Oldman (“Darkest Hour”), Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird”), Willem Dafoe (“The Florida Project”) and Allison Janney (“I, Tonya”) were just some of the names on hand to raise a glass to filmmakers Charles Burnett and Agnes Varda, cinematographer Owen Roizman and actor Donald Sutherland at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ ninth annual Governors Awards ceremony.
Also honored was filmmaker Alejandro G. Inarritu, for his virtual reality installation “Carne y Arena.” The Oscar-winning director of “Birdman” and “The Revenant” received a rare special commendation from the Academy for his efforts.
Luminaries such as Lawrence Kasdan, Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Chastain, Angelina Jolie and Ava DuVernay dropped into the program to pay their respects to the quintet as the non-televised satellite Oscars event unfolded at the Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, just a few flights above the very spot where new Oscar winners will be crowned in four months’ time.
“Tonight’s honorees have each added a single voice to the chorus of world cinema,” AMPAS president John Bailey said in his opening remarks. Indeed, as the Academy softly pivots to the internationalization of the organization amid an ongoing inclusion debate, this year’s lineup of honorary Oscar recipients was one of the most diverse ever.
Roizman’s honor kicked off the evening. Kasdan noted that the “genius brew” conjured by the celebrated cinematographer and director William Friedkin on early 1970s films like “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” changed movies forever. “We all wanted our movies to look like that,” Kasdan said.
Hoffman, who worked with Roizman on Sydney Pollack’s “Tootsie,” had the honors of presenting, noting that the lenser “sees not only a picture, an image -- but a story.”
Visibly touched, the five-time Oscar-nominated Roizman paid tribute to the collaborative nature of the medium. “Film is made up of many silver particles,” he said. “Each one represents someone working on a film.”
The comedy portion of the evening came next, courtesy of Academy directors branch governor Kimberly Peirce. In a long and hilarious ode to filmmaker Agnes Varda alongside documentary branch governor Kate Amend, Peirce probably broke a record at the buttoned-up event for most mentions of the word “orgasm.”
Chastain, meanwhile, noted that “the difference between being an iconoclast and an icon is time, and Agnes Varda has somehow managed to remain on the cutting edge.” Jolie followed, adding that “‘female director’ is a label might resist. She is first and foremost an artist. When she started making films, they were not films women weren’t making -- they were films no one was making.”
Varda capped her acceptance speech by gifting the evening with one of its most precious photo ops: Cutting a rug on stage with Jolie.
Burnett’s reach and the inspiration he has instilled was also palpable. Filmmakers Reginald Hudlin and Sean Baker, and actors Chadwick Boseman and Tessa Thompson, were among those who paid tribute to the director’s work, which has gone largely under-recognized for much of his career.