I've been stalking Claude Sautet ever since the retrospective dedicated to him at last year's San Sebastian festival, and I took advantage of the fact that 2024 marks the centenary of his birth. He may not be as coddled a filmmaker as Godard, Rohmer, Truffaut or Chabrol, but his work is solid and has a distinctiveness and musicality worth discovering. Plus, if you're a Lea Seydoux fan, you might want to know that before her there was Romy Schneider, Sautet's gorgeous fetish actress.
Hamaguchi is present at 3x3 within the extended context of TIFF.23's Focus dedicated to Japan, with the film that propelled him to the Oscar and into the international cinephile stratosphere (Drive My Car), with one of his early films, Passion, and with his most recent one, awarded in Venice, Evil Does Not Exist, which is so cryptic that I foresee prolonged discussions late into the night to decode its ending.
Last, but not least, Luchetti, who is coming to TIFF to receive a well-deserved Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema Trophy. Trust an almost vintage, provocative oeuvre with a dynamite idea and a sensational Elio Germano, such a peculiar film, as they are rarely made today. For a compact experience, the program only includes those titles in his filmography which, like Trust, are inspired by the novels of Domenico Starnone – an author who deserves to be further translated here, especially his School.
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This year’s TIFF takes place between Roland Garros, the European Football Championship, and the Olympics. It's a year full of sports. Obviously, it's the kind of context that invites extra-conjunctural representations – all the more so since the films in this sports-themed section are not only about sports or from the safe, illustrative-inspirational area. Tatami is a mind-numbing political thriller with a concrete concept. Voy! Voy! Voy!, Egypt's Oscar submission, is not necessarily about football, so much as it is a tenderly cynical, subversive and slightly politically incorrect comedy. Touché is not only about fencing and success, but also about abandonment and ambition. And Kretsul is not limited to a real story from the realm of the Paralympic Games, but is an anthem about friendship, sacrifice and 100% commitment, made in the aesthetics of the Romanian New Wave.