The wonderful Carmen Maura is a retired widow, living alone in the bustling city of Tangiers. Her daughter, keen to make money by selling the house, pushes her out and starts a sequence of events that are all about finding community and conversation and purpose.
It’s a small film in its way. But its an absolute joy to watch Maura pottering through the city, coming up with schemes and badmouthing those who wrong her to a silent nun.
An interesting counterpart to the Blue Trail which told a story of an older woman lead, muscled out of her routine by her daughter, forging her own path (in a very different way!).
Quite good fun. It’s basically Russian Doll meets Day of the Triffids. A Groundhog day scenario playing out over and over again, every time the character dies. And there are some giant plant monsters which do seem quite intent on making that happen.
It’s well put together, has some pretty cool scenes and builds the fairly familiar repeating day theme nicely.
Archive footage spanning decades of European train journeys. This was an interesting effort but I’m not sure it was edited as tightly as it could have been. After a pretty tense and at times gruesome middle section which covered the war wounded, Nazis on a train and all that Nazis do, the final third or so just sort of fizzled out.
Though I could imagine it’d be pretty cool with live music accompaniment.
And part 2! A slightly weaker selection to my mind, with all 3 of my favourites coming from the other programme. Star for me here was the lovely handmade vibe of Progress Mining
Monday morning at the Progress Mining Company is a decaying, cubist nightmare of monotony. As one worker shows round a new employer, another campaigns for its closure and reconstruction, as the long-buried secrets of Sector Three quickly come to light.
Animation Part 1. It’s always a favourite, and always pretty hard to describe.
My favourite by some way was Retirement Plan:
Ray daydreams about how to spend his retirement once he finally has some free time. Wonderfully simple in style yet capturing a world of emotion as we delve through his list; this moving and sweet short invites us to consider how to live before the inevitable.