On the agenda today was The Angels’ Share directed by the well-decorated Ken Loach, a film I had been curious about after yet another award win (Jury Prize) for Loach in Cannes. The film starts out as brittle-edged Loachian social(ist) realism but deftly morphs into a light comedic caper, not so far off from the feel of something like Bottle Rocket by Wes Anderson. Robbie (Paul Brannigan) is one strike away from going back to jail, with a newborn son to worry about and a local Glasgow gang out to get revenge on him. Because of an angelic community worker he is introduced to the world of boutique whiskey and soon hatches a scheme to siphon off a supply of the world’s most rare and expensive liquor.

The Angels’ Share

Only one film on the agenda today for the Belgrade FEST because of other obligations – but it’s a big one: Spielberg’s Lincoln, screening a day after Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for best actor. Day-Lewis’ performance was a good one, but not great. There were no challenges set out for this often very daring actor. Spielberg lobbed him a softball. Fitting that he won an Academy Award for the work.

Today two acclaimed films by two respected auteurs were on the festival menu. First up was Like Someone in Love directed by Abbas Kiarostami. I have never followed the man’s career, so perhaps I am deprived of the proper glasses through which to watch his work. Like Someone in Love felt like half of a film to me. Some would call it opaque, I would call it breezily truncated. The ending is genuinely abrupt, providing the only jolt in the length of the work which also opens a mystery at the same time that it effectively shuts it closed. All of the other scenes were barely interesting as sketches.

Another day in the cramped aisles of the press screening theater at Belgrade FEST. However, this time the first film I saw was a pleasurable experience that was very much worth the uncomfortable rows. Flight directed by Robert Zemeckis hit a lot of notes from the beginning, in terms of the film’s genre and style. The airplane disaster film, a druggy comedy, a druggy drama, a courtroom procedural, and finally something of a family melodrama. The tones shift but not wildly, as Zemeckis is too slick a Hollywood director for that. Generally the performances are superb, though Don Cheadle is woefully underused as a slick corporate attorney. John Goodman’s Lebowski-style drug dealing slacker is very amusing. Denzel Washington, playing an alcoholic pilot accused of negligence, does what he does best – makes it look easy.

Today was the day they had a press conference to introduce this year’s edition of FEST, which I missed. Though I did make the presser for the film Along the Roadside directed by Zoran Lisinac, starring Michael Madsen. Madsen is the special guest at this year’s FEST who officially opens the festival, and being a big star his presence drew a lot of attention. There were more than 3,000 people crammed into the big theater in the Sava Center for the opening night screening. It would seem that after some lean years around the turn of the century, FEST is back in a big way.

The chilly end of each February brings around another edition of the Belgrade International Film Festival, affectionately known as “FEST” since it’s inception. Originally billed as a “festival of festivals”, this is where one goes to get something of a recap of the previous year’s best cinematic fare (often including the Palme d’Or winner and other treasures of international cinema). This makes FEST tend towards something of a broad survey rather than a festival with a specific culture, and as an event it is aimed squarely at the mainstream cinema audience who are hungry for a taste of things that are normally beyond their reach. There are no markets, no roundtable discussions, no retrospectives. This is not a festival for industry types or hardcore cinephiles. FEST rather aims at the middle with something for everyone.