Stop-Zemlia: I Was There | European Film Festival 2022
There, sometime in the past, when the it kids of the 2010s, whose cardinal points were the Super Festival and the SUB25 magazine, moved from the dank promiscuous bars – without fully letting go of them – towards the central splendors of the online world where, especially on Tumblr, each of them could be the inventor of their own grace. The spark was elusive, undoubtedly so, but not in vain, not lacking in importance, because the lion’s share of these magnificent or terrible fixations of the new generation of teenagers, such as the bravado of sexuality, new age-ism, social hyper-sensitivity along with hyper-lucidity, the ways of being online, at last, the majority were vaguely starting to take shape back then, all in all. But the cinema of this transitory sensibility, whose patron saint was none other than Xavier Dolan, didn’t age as gracefully. Looking back at any given film that was too squeaky, too plasticized, from Kill Your Darlings (dir. John Krokidas, 2013) to The Perks of Being a Wallflower (dir. Stephen Chbosky, 2012), to Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003), the latter having something of the allure of a cult movie, there is not much to see aside from historical or genre pornographies, along whose lines, without any prelude, the act of belonging trumps meaning. Dolan’s films were of a different ilk, they were unpredictable, eccentric, always willing to scream the whispers of youth from the tops of the roof, willing to blow up the tiniest of things to the biggest of measures. Of course, the ideal film of a youth shared by so many does not exist; but what I can say is that I have discovered the film that was missing from my own teenage experience. It just so happens that this film is Ukrainian, and, I think, it comes at a great delay.
Film curator, writer and editor, member of the selection committees of BIEFF and Woche der Kritik, FIPRESCI member and alumnus of the film criticism workshops organized by the Sarajevo, Warsaw and Locarno film festivals. Teaches a course on film criticism and analysis at UNATC. He has curated programs for Cinemateca Română, Short Waves, V-F-X Ljubljana, Trieste Film Festival, as well as the Bucharest retrospective of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour in 2024 and 2025.
