We find, in this 33e edition held from July 5 to 11 in Marseille, the Marseille International Film Festival (FID, former International Documentary Festival) in an in-between. Classical in its origins, the event met in 2002 a madman named Jean-Pierre Rehm. While leaving the festival tied to documentaries, the new artistic delegate soon exploded routine and genres, introducing films from the far reaches in great waves (contemporary art, activism, experimental, filmed newspapers, fiction, etc.). The FID has become one of the most inventive French festivals of the moment, not without taking risks which will have had its share of film scoria. But what panache!
Twenty years later, a scenario is called for. The first question is the departure, in full selection, in January, of Jean-Pierre Rehm. The wear and tear had been there for a few years, but the void left by such a charismatic figure is a problem for the FID board of directors, which has not found a replacement for him, despite hearings with candidates recognized by the profession. Its president, Yves Robert, also director of the Biennale de Lyon, has therefore announced the takeover of the festival by the team in place, which is trying the experience of collegiality. However talented she may be – let us quote in particular Tsveta Dobreva at the direction and the critic Cyril Neyrat at the programming – it is a formidable challenge to leave an artistic manifestation of this scale thus headless.
Aesthetic successes
Another tricky question is the evolution of the festival itself. Moving away from the diversity of its beginnings, the FID, no doubt because it wanted to bear witness to this constantly increasing production, has transformed itself into a showcase for “different cinema”. A benefit on the one hand, with the incredible success met by the festival both internationally and with a young, local audience, and visibly eager for an alternative to exploitation cinema. A thorn in the side on the other hand, so much of this production is tainted with egotism. By which it reveals itself, however different it may be, in keeping with the spirit of our time. We were able to verify this this year, where the relationship between world premieres (still required at the FID) and aesthetic successes was painful. A laudable policy finds, with this unsatisfactory ratio, its limit.
Some works shone no less. We have already expressed our admiration for See you Friday, Robinson, by Mitra Farahani. We renew it for All of me won’t disappear, by Joanna Grudzinska, an inspired, delicate, suggestive documentary on a tragic figure in Polish literature. Zuzanna Ginczanka, born Sara Ginzburg on March 22, 1917 in kyiv, then part of the Russian Empire, moved with her parents to Poland to flee the Bolshevik Revolution. Lyrical and feminist in temperament, this very young woman became, from 1935, an admired figure of the poetic avant-garde. She is thus part of this tiny fraction of the Jewish community which chooses to emancipate itself not by one or the other of the Jewish national languages, Yiddish and Hebrew, but by that of the host country. The war caught up with her, however, she was denounced and killed in 1945, in a prison, not without having had time to engrave in letters of fire, in this Polish language which was also that of her executioners, the evocation of the martyrdom of a people she joined. Will we believe, thinking of this Jewish-Polish poet born in Ukraine and the war that is taking place there today, that the Polish censor saw fit to ban the film?
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