Review: Intersections from Gulf Film Festival

Film: Away (Russia)

Director Anna Sarukhanova’s heart-wrenching story offers an utterly absorbing, silent snapshot on life in a Georgia town. With no dialogue, we watch a faceless young man as he visits various friends and records his last moments before he leaves to venture to an unknown destination. Sarukhanova’s film manages to evoke raw emotion, as we watch the man wrestle with the pain of leaving behind his family and girlfriend in order to take the risk involved in taking the perceived better option.

Film: Zini And Ami (Italy)

Pierluca Di Pasquale’s satirical snapshot on why a man’s failed relationship leads him to purchase an android prototype as a replacement girlfriend is an hilariously poignant portrait of love and desperate measures. Zini buys Ami, a highly sophisticated robot – and diligently has her programmed to his exact specifications. Superior intelligence? Tick. Well read? Tick. Pitch-perfect romantic gestures, via knowing when to be silent, sultry, and spontaneous? Tick, tick tick. All goes swimmingly, until Ami develops a glitch and no one is able to find a solution. Ami goes from divine to a downright nuisance – and we must witness Zini’s descent into gloom. A brilliantly biting take on the pursuit of perfection.

Film: Boo! (Australia)

Rupert Reid’s bittersweet film centres on an elderly couple, who, in the humdrum of a long marriage, love to play practical jokes on each other. Specifically, this involves the pair taking it in turns to pretend to die from a series of different afflictions — from the husband’s fake heart attack at the kitchen table, to him pretending to have died in his sleep, to the wife’s more risky falling down the stairs stunt. As the couple’s pranks on each other become more daring, sadly, the inevitable happens. A short, but-not-so sweet, take on the lengths a married couple will go to in order to keep their relationship alive.