It’s been a banner week for Pittsburghers interested in watching more international cinema.
Last Friday marked the beginning of Row House Cinema’s Pittsburgh Japanese Film Festival, which was making its triumphant return after two years of COVID-induced cancellations. Then, running Thursday through April 9, the 2022 Carnegie Mellon University International Film Festival offers even more opportunities to check out movies made by non-American filmmakers.
Unlike the Japanese Film Festival, CMU’s International Film Festival was able to go on virtually in 2020 and 2021. Its 2022 iteration is bringing back in-person screenings for the first time since 2019, and will feature 13 movies and documentaries from around the world that exemplify this year’s theme of “faces behind the masks.”
“Masks can mean a pride for nations,” said Jolanta Lion, the festival’s director. “It can mean protest. It could mean identity as well. We try to explore the meanings of ‘mask’ in films in a different way.”
Lion is also the assistant director of CMU’s Humanities Center, which organizes the festival annually with the help of students from multiple local universities. Full-festival ($50), opening night and reception ($15), and regular film screening passes ($10) are available at cmu.edu/faces. Students and seniors can buy each type of ticket for $25, $10 and $5, respectively.
Most of the screenings will take place at CMU’s McConomy Auditorium, with a few also being held at Carlow University’s Gailliot Center and Downtown’s Harris Theater. Many of this year’s films were released just last year, including Jessica Kingdon’s Oscar-nominated documentary “Ascension,” Nadav Lapid’s “Ahed’s Knee,” Agnieszka Woszczynska’s “Silent Land” and Alex Camilleri’s “Luzzu.”
The International Film Festival is “the combined work of so many students” who helped Lion whittle down the approximately 150 films she selected to a more palatable number. Lion said she did her best to pull films that have already been shown at various festivals worldwide and that she believed could spark the most discussions here.
Her team included Isaac Fisher, a first-year CMU master’s of arts management student and festival design committee member, and University of Pittsburgh juniors and festival writers Regis Curtis and Katie Cassidy. All of them had to juggle a full course load and other outside activities with their festival-planning responsibilities.
“It definitely is chaotic,” Cassidy said. “It pushes you to your limits in every aspect: physically, mentally, emotionally. It’s a lot, but I enjoy it so much because it’s so worth it. We see our impact and we know we have a voice at the table.”
For Curtis, the “real, tangible impact on what’s presented in the festival” that an undergrad like him was allowed to have kept him motivated through even the toughest stretches. He was also invigorated by how the festival can attract Pittsburghers from every neighborhood and walk of life.
“[M]aking a festival that goes around the world, speaks to those communities and presents opportunities for those communities to come together is really incredible and work that needs to be done,” he said.
Choosing masks as a theme for this year’s International Film Festival was a no-brainer given what a hot topic they have been over the last two years thanks to the pandemic. Of course, in terms of cinema, the concept of “masks” is often used in a much more metaphorical sense to communicate weightier ideas about how we choose to present ourselves publicly and privately.
Fisher acknowledged the “superficial reason” that masks made sense as a 2022 festival theme while expanding on how this year’s films relate to that concept.
“It was a great opportunity to examine the masks we do wear, even under the N95s ...,” he said. “Characters start taking off layers of masks as the films go on and your opinions of them start to change. People will have the opportunity to reexamine how we relate to the outside world and when we take masks on and off.”
There are two movies Fisher is particularly excited for folks to check out: P.S. Vinothraj’s “Pebbles,” set in rural India, and Nabil Ayouch’s “Casablanca Beats,” about hip-hop culture in Morocco. Curtis shouted out the documentary “Trenches” in which French director Loup Bureau examines Russia’s brutality in its border war with Ukraine, prior to the full-scale invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in late February.
Cassidy said she is partial to Jan P. Matuszynski’s “Leave No Traces,” a Polish drama that happened to be the first of this year’s crop of films that she watched.
“It really just sold me on the festival,” she said. “If these are the types of films we’re showing, it’s something I want to be a part of.”
That’s exactly the sort of enthusiasm Lion hopes Pittsburgh cinephiles show for this year’s lineup.
“For $5, you can’t get a better deal,” she said. “You’ll have awarded films from all the festivals, discussions with the experts on the issues — and we’ll feed you.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: March 22, 2022, 2:36 p.m.
