Questions of authenticity and authorship in cinema – who gets to tell what stories — are thorny ones. With his trilogy of films on the Aboriginal experience, The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country, Dutch-born white Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer has managed to avoid charges of cultural appropriation. This is due in large part to de Heer’s obvious respect for Indigenous culture and traditions and to his working method, which involves deep collaboration with the communities involved, as well as the on-screen talent, most famously with the late, great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil.
For his new film, The Survival of Kindness, De Heer again takes on the ugly legacy of racism and colonialism. The film, which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, is the story of a Black woman (identified in the credits only as Black Woman) and her harrowing odyssey out of captivity. Shot entirely without intelligible dialogue,...
For his new film, The Survival of Kindness, De Heer again takes on the ugly legacy of racism and colonialism. The film, which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, is the story of a Black woman (identified in the credits only as Black Woman) and her harrowing odyssey out of captivity. Shot entirely without intelligible dialogue,...
- 2/19/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
It is probably Australia. But it could be anywhere where the sun is hot enough to bake the earth into boundless stretches of cracked crazy-paving. It is probably an alternate recent past. But it could be any period in human history when mankind has divided itself into categories of oppressor and oppressed. The most remarkable aspect of Rolf de Heer’s elegiac, elemental “The Survival of Kindness” is that it is an allegory so direct as to be obvious, told in a style so spartan as to be opaque. Not one syllable of intelligible language is spoken, but the choral anguish of generations subjugated to colonial cruelty rings loud through every wordless frame.
In a forbiddingly desolate desert landscape, shot with Dp Maxx Corkindale’s elegantly unadorned realism, the only evidence of humanity is the very definition of inhumanity: a crude iron cage in which is locked a woman (an...
In a forbiddingly desolate desert landscape, shot with Dp Maxx Corkindale’s elegantly unadorned realism, the only evidence of humanity is the very definition of inhumanity: a crude iron cage in which is locked a woman (an...
- 2/19/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
’Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything’, ’The Survival Of Kindness’ and ’BlackBerry’ land with middling scores.
Emily Atef’s Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything, Rolf de Heer’s The Survival Of Kindness and Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry are the first titles to land on Screen’s Berlin 2023 Competition jury grid.
De Heer’s film leads with an average of 2.4, followed closely by the other two titles on 2.3.
Click top left to expand
Seven critics are taking part in this year’s jury grid and will mark all 19 films playing in competition.
The Survival Of Kindness received four three-star ratings...
Emily Atef’s Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything, Rolf de Heer’s The Survival Of Kindness and Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry are the first titles to land on Screen’s Berlin 2023 Competition jury grid.
De Heer’s film leads with an average of 2.4, followed closely by the other two titles on 2.3.
Click top left to expand
Seven critics are taking part in this year’s jury grid and will mark all 19 films playing in competition.
The Survival Of Kindness received four three-star ratings...
- 2/18/2023
- by Ellie Calnan
- ScreenDaily
The magnetic actor’s shattering performance in Rolf de Heer’s race-hate film is rich with emotion – forged through an unthinkable amount of real-life hardship
Mwajemi Hussein had never set foot inside a cinema before she auditioned for the lead role in a film by one of Australia’s most celebrated directors. Growing up in a village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Drc), there were no cinemas. In her 20s, fleeing war, she lived for eight years in a refugee camp in Tanzania with her husband and children. Later, after the family were granted asylum in Australia, there was simply no time. “I was busy learning English and raising children, going everywhere, volunteering,” she grins.
To describe Hussein, 51, as busy is an understatement. As we speak over Zoom, it’s the end of her working day in Adelaide. After learning English in Australia, she studied for a degree...
Mwajemi Hussein had never set foot inside a cinema before she auditioned for the lead role in a film by one of Australia’s most celebrated directors. Growing up in a village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Drc), there were no cinemas. In her 20s, fleeing war, she lived for eight years in a refugee camp in Tanzania with her husband and children. Later, after the family were granted asylum in Australia, there was simply no time. “I was busy learning English and raising children, going everywhere, volunteering,” she grins.
To describe Hussein, 51, as busy is an understatement. As we speak over Zoom, it’s the end of her working day in Adelaide. After learning English in Australia, she studied for a degree...
- 2/17/2023
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
In his films The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country, Rolf de Heer has mixed lyrical allegory with naturalism and genre conventions, ethnographic docudrama with morality tale and Aboriginal storytelling traditions to reclaim the dignity of Indigenous Australians and decry the injustices of white colonization. The collaborative spirit of those projects — notably with the great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, who died in 2021 — has enabled the Dutch-born writer-director to avoid charges of cultural appropriation.
His new film, The Survival of Kindness, returns to the theme of racism, this time as a minimalist tone poem entirely without intelligible dialogue, its key characters identified in the credits only as BlackWoman, BrownGirl and BrownBoy. The dystopian vision is set against harshly beautiful landscapes that are recognizably Australian yet distinctly abstract in their depiction of place and time.
The degree to which this lament for humanity connects with any audience will vary wildly. Some will...
His new film, The Survival of Kindness, returns to the theme of racism, this time as a minimalist tone poem entirely without intelligible dialogue, its key characters identified in the credits only as BlackWoman, BrownGirl and BrownBoy. The dystopian vision is set against harshly beautiful landscapes that are recognizably Australian yet distinctly abstract in their depiction of place and time.
The degree to which this lament for humanity connects with any audience will vary wildly. Some will...
- 2/17/2023
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The intersection between Black Lives Matter and a Covid-like pandemic plus a standout performance from non-professional actor Mwajemi Hussein is sure to make “The Survival of Kindness” one of Berlin’s most talked-about films.
The film is deliberately obscure – the little dialog that is heard involves each performer speaking in a language of their own invention with the meaning known only to that actor and the film’s director, Australia’s Rolf de Heer.
And it is minimalist. Character names are purely functional. Location filming was done with a crew of just nine people who walked extensively across Tasmania and the deserts of South Australia and cooked for each other between set-ups.
Yet “Kindness” packs in a lot. It opens jarringly with a gas-mask-wearing tea party before cutting to a black woman abandoned in a metal cage in the middle of a sandy desert. After she escapes into a dystopian...
The film is deliberately obscure – the little dialog that is heard involves each performer speaking in a language of their own invention with the meaning known only to that actor and the film’s director, Australia’s Rolf de Heer.
And it is minimalist. Character names are purely functional. Location filming was done with a crew of just nine people who walked extensively across Tasmania and the deserts of South Australia and cooked for each other between set-ups.
Yet “Kindness” packs in a lot. It opens jarringly with a gas-mask-wearing tea party before cutting to a black woman abandoned in a metal cage in the middle of a sandy desert. After she escapes into a dystopian...
- 2/17/2023
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
Visionary Dutch-Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer, known for several landmark films including “Ten Canoes” and “Charlie’s Country,” is in competition at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival with “The Survival of Kindness.”
An allegory for racism, the film follows BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert. She escapes and walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to canyon to mountain to city, on a quest that leads to a city, recapture and tragedy.
Many of de Heer’s films are born with a single image in his mind. In the case of “The Survival of Kindness” this was an image of Peter Djigirr, the filmmaker’s closest Indigenous friend, who co-directed “Ten Canoes” and co-produced “Charlie’s Country” and acted in both of them, locked in a cage on a trailer abandoned in the desert.
“In the same way that the image of...
An allegory for racism, the film follows BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert. She escapes and walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to canyon to mountain to city, on a quest that leads to a city, recapture and tragedy.
Many of de Heer’s films are born with a single image in his mind. In the case of “The Survival of Kindness” this was an image of Peter Djigirr, the filmmaker’s closest Indigenous friend, who co-directed “Ten Canoes” and co-produced “Charlie’s Country” and acted in both of them, locked in a cage on a trailer abandoned in the desert.
“In the same way that the image of...
- 2/7/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
The Berlin International Film Festival unveiled the competition lineup for its 2023 edition on Monday morning, naming the 18 movies that will compete for the coveted Gold and Silver Bears at the 73rd Berlinale.
Berlinale executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian presented a very international and arthouse-heavy lineup, with a strong focus on politically-charged cinema.
In a late addition, Superpower, Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s documentary on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Russian invasion of the country and the ongoing war, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s out-of-competition Berlinale Special section. The doc, made for Vice Studios, Aldamisa Entertainment and Fifth Season, is being sold internationally by Fifth Season.
Berlin 2023, taking place a year after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, will have a major focus on Ukraine. Even the festival’s official pin will be in the Ukraine colors of blue and yellow.
In competition, German auteur...
Berlinale executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian presented a very international and arthouse-heavy lineup, with a strong focus on politically-charged cinema.
In a late addition, Superpower, Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s documentary on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Russian invasion of the country and the ongoing war, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s out-of-competition Berlinale Special section. The doc, made for Vice Studios, Aldamisa Entertainment and Fifth Season, is being sold internationally by Fifth Season.
Berlin 2023, taking place a year after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, will have a major focus on Ukraine. Even the festival’s official pin will be in the Ukraine colors of blue and yellow.
In competition, German auteur...
- 1/23/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Veteran Australian director Rolf De Heer (“Ten Canoes”) is shooting a new film titled “The Mountain,” for which Italy’s Fandango Sales is launching sales at the online AFM.
“The Mountain” (pictured above in a first-look image) tells the story of a central character named BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert. Following her escape from the cage, “she walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain to city, to find … more captivity,” reads the film’s synopsis.
“BlackWoman walks and walks, past ruins and dunes until she finds boots, and skeletons and skulls, a wrecked world where few survive and your newly gained boots can get stolen at the point of a gun.”
“Those responsible are reluctant to release their privilege, and BlackWoman, escaping once more, must find solace in her beginnings,” it adds. The film stars Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, and Darsan Sharma.
“The Mountain” (pictured above in a first-look image) tells the story of a central character named BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert. Following her escape from the cage, “she walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain to city, to find … more captivity,” reads the film’s synopsis.
“BlackWoman walks and walks, past ruins and dunes until she finds boots, and skeletons and skulls, a wrecked world where few survive and your newly gained boots can get stolen at the point of a gun.”
“Those responsible are reluctant to release their privilege, and BlackWoman, escaping once more, must find solace in her beginnings,” it adds. The film stars Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, and Darsan Sharma.
- 11/2/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
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