The Earth is Blue as an Orange by Iryna Tsilyk
As Catherine le Clef of Paris sales house Cat and Docs eyes up IDFA 2020 with five films in official selection and two more in Docs for Sale, she tells how, while her company has suffered no negative impact of the pandemic, her new ‘online’ modus operandi is far from ideal.
Milo Rau’s stunning The New Gospel, selected for Feature-length competition, heads up the Cat and Docs IDFA 2020 slate. Set in the Italian town of Matera, where both Pasolini and Mel Gibson told their respective New Testament tales, the film asks what Jesus would preach in the 21st Century, and proceeds to tell the Easter story with political activist Yvan Sagnet playing the central role.
Le Clef agrees that the work may deserve a place in most Easter TV schedules, but underlines her core reason for picking it up for international sales. “I choose films because I think they are important and because I like them, and it is true that I am not always thinking about the sales. It is not the first thing that comes into my mind. First is the content and how the film is made.”
Le Clef is also selling Heddy Honigmann’s 100UP, which is world-premiering in Dutch competition. The film underlines the joy of living, as experienced by a selection of centenarians who look forward to each new day.
Also world-premiering at IDFA is by Reka Valerik’s Silent Voice, in Mid-length Competition, telling of a Chechnyan man (Khavaj) who is struck by mutism after his brother promises to kill him on hearing that he is gay. The film traces Khavaj’s first months in Belgium where he is forced to live in total anonymity, build a new identity and escape the attention of the Chechnyan diaspora.
The festival slate in completed by Jerzy Sladkowski’s Bitter Love (Masters), a heart-warming exploration into finding love on the Volga, and the multi award-winning The Earth is Blue as an Orange by Iryna Tsilyk (Directing Award – Sundance World Documentary Competition). In the film a single mother and her four children living in a Ukrainian war zone find means of survival through the magic of cinema.
Le Clef describes life over the past nine months “I was surprised it was ok,” she says. “We didn’t suffer that much from the pandemic. I thought I would work less but that was not the case. Especially when you can do nothing else, you work even more. Sales-wise it was not that bad, so the company is still ok.”
Buyers remained “active,” she says. “I am sure that they will need more films so let’s hope they will come back maybe for films they wouldn’t take usually, but it’s too early to say.”
She has a slew of online meetings arranged for Forum, but that has been the story of her past year. “All these festivals and markets were online. We were travelling in front of our computers, two hours last week in Japan and listening to stuff, so that takes a lot of time because now you can’t say no [to attendance], and then it doesn’t stop.”
“What I miss is the contact with people. When you are in a festival or a market you meet people that you didn’t expect, you exchange things that you don’t do on Zoom,” she adds.
“For me it’s not a plus. I need to see people. I need to communicate. I need to go in a theatre to watch a film with an audience. I really miss that part,” Le Clef continues. “But you can still live with it. You can adapt, that’s for sure. But I would never have chosen my job if I knew it [would be] like that.”
Additional Docs for Sale titles are Fly So Far (Sweden/El Salvador) by Celina Escher which follows Teodora Vásquez, the spokesperson for women accused of aggravated homicide, and imprisoned in El Salvador for having had a miscarriage.
In No Visible Trauma (Canada) by Marc Serpa Francoeur & Robinder Uppal, within the midst of a global uprising against police brutality and systemic racism, we are presented an examination of a deeply troubled police department which reveals the devastating consequences of unchecked police brutality.
