A film festival is one place where every hardcore film lover can capture the latest buzz in cinema the world over. A monthly visit to Banner Film Festival is never a waste of time in this regard as it captures the pulse of an eclectic audience and caters to diverse needs. Come Sunday, Banner Film Society brings to you four celebrated films in world cinema. The fest with a track record of showing classics has included films released after mid 2010s in this edition.
The show begins at 9.30 am with the 2016 flick Shepherds and Butchers of Oliver Schmitz. A remnant of the apartheid, the film has a white prison guard gunning down seven black men in a shooting spree and the subsequent trial.
The pioneer of New German Cinema, Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert (2015) comes next. It’s a real life story told through the life and times of British traveller, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer and political officer Gertrude Bell.
The Corpse of Anna Fritz (2015) has the shortest duration in the bouquet of four. It is 76 minutes long. Revolving around the theme of necrophilia, it has three men, Pau, who works in a hospital morgue, his friends Ivan and Javi, getting attracted to the corpse of a female actor, Anna Fritz. The complications and tensions rising within them take the movie forward. The director is Hèctor Hernández Vicens.
The fourth film in the series, Silence (2016) by Martin Scorsese, is a historical period drama. The plot belongs to the time of Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638), when Christians hid to escape persecution since the suppression of Japanese Roman Catholics were rampant. The venue is Lenin Balavadi behind Tagore Theatre in Vazhuthacaud.
