‘Paris, District 13’ and other premieres

The always brilliant Jacques Audiard (‘A Prophet’) dives into the love lives of ‘millennials’. Three girls and a boy from Paris are friends, lovers, and sometimes both at the same time in this nonjudgmental, nonjudgmental look at a generation that has swapped romance for technology. Audiard is based on three graphic novels by Adrian Tomine and sets the action in the Olympiades neighborhood, populated by skyscrapers and with a great cultural mix. “What’s really going on in our age of Tinder and ‘sleeping on the first date’?” asks the director. «Is there room for a love speech in these conditions? Yes, of course, there is no doubt. But, at what point does the love speech come into play? What are the words and what are the protocols? That is one of the main narrative threads of ‘Paris, Arrondissement 13’».

The second film by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, nominated for an Oscar for best international film in 2021, uses the world of art to reflect on refugees. The protagonist of this scathing satire is a Syrian refugee who agrees to exhibit himself in museums with a work of art tattooed on his back in exchange for achieving the desired freedom in the West. The film was presented at the Venice Festival, where its leading actor, Yahya Mahayni, won the Best Actor Award in the Orizzonti section. According to the director, “contemporary art and refugees are two opposite worlds.” “One represents the ultimate luxury and the other is based on pure survival, but both revolve around freedom, understood from capitalism or from the absence of choice.”

The French director Jérôme Bonnell enters from the humor, fleeing from the topics, in the fears of sentimental rupture. An estranged man in his forties tries to get back together with his mistress. She turns him down and he ends up at the bar across the street from her house, where she writes him a romantic letter. Grégory Montel, Anaïs Demoustier and Grégory Gadebois star in this irony-laden sitcom. “When you write a letter full of passion, you should ask yourself if you love the recipient or yourself,” says Jérôme Bonnell.

The book ‘Orkestra Lurtarra’, written by Harkaitz Cano and winner of the Euskadi Award, jumps into children’s animation cinema. Imanol Zinkunegi and Joseba Ponce are in charge of directing, while the script has been written by Cano himself together with Eneko Olasagasti. According to his producer, this is “the most fun and crazy work of Lotura Films to date, ideal for both children and adults.” Her protagonist fell in love platonically as a child with a great pianist and her dream is to meet her. To do this, following the advice of a shady character who will later become a manager, he will form an orchestra. But Manu, in addition to being a dreamer with capital letters, is also misunderstood, an outsider who goes free, starting with the peculiarity of his instrument, which is none other than the broom. His peculiar orchestra is made up of a double bass player who feels itchy in the armpit when she is nervous, two twin brothers who play the winds and have a supernatural sense of smell, a mustachioed countertenor and a percussionist who plays a triangle on which a goldfinch. They are also accompanied by a gypsy goat that does the number on the stairs.