Toronto International Film Festival is very glamorous with its diffusions of future Academy nominated films and the presence of worldly known actors; but it is also the perfect place to discover young international talents. As I am very interested by the Scandinavian cinema, I decided to watch **Hunting Flies** while waiting for the première of a more famous movie later on this evening. I was very surprised to discover an excellent independent movie, way better than the other film I saw this day- even maybe one of the best films I saw at TIFF. The movie tells the story of Ghani who is a teacher in a Macedonian elementary school that gathers young pupils from three different and politically rival villages. As he is about to lose his job and is very annoyed by the relentless arguments the children cause by reciting their parent’s speeches without thinking about their meanings, Ghani decides to try an experiment in order to prove to his students that they have way more in common than they think. However, as the evening goes on, Ghani is more and more under pressure because he is convinced that the success of his experiment will allow him to preserve his job, so he starts to use debatable methods to impose his point of view on the children.
The film’s statement is original and interesting. Izer Aliu, the director, affirme his will to explore the formation of a dictatorship. Consequently, he does not only settle for a classic film about social and political reconciliations initiated in a group of innocent children and decides to reverse his movie at the middle of it. By underlining that every dogmatism, even initially based on good intentions- gathering rival communities, taking into account universal equality- can be extremely dangerous. Ghani is very idealist and only desires to establish peace within his institution- that is also the reasons why he wants to preserve his job- nonetheless, he is so convinced he is right that he imposes his opinion on others and does it in a pretty brutal way. Thus, the film offers two very interesting messages. The first one, already seen elsewhere but still presented in a very efficient way in **Hunting Flies**: all man is equal to the others independently from his opinions, especially political ones; there are so many similarities to explore instead on focusing on differences. The second, more original and audacious and yet exposed with a genial pertinence: any dogmatism, even the ones following an ideology based on good intentions is dangerous.
The casting, mostly composed of amateur actors and yet excellent, contributes to transmit these messages efficiently and with emotion. The young actors are very talented and full of spontaneity and the camera sublimes their intrepidity when it films them one by one. Burhan Amiti who plays the teacher gives a very subtile prestation and incarnates perfectly an ambiguous character.
Despite the very low budget of the film (500 euros!!!), Ali succeed in proposing very interesting shots. The framing and the composition of the image are always very creative and innovative and offer to the film a certain poesy, which is surprising as the subject, very anchored into the real world, did not seem likely to approach this lyricism. The cinematography for its part remains pretty basic and not very remarkable in comparison to the rest of the film, but this small default does not reduce the quality of the piece at all.
Aliu’s film is a real revelation that deserves a lot of attention form the festivaliers and the spectators. We hope that the film will find distributors in the USA- even if its sobriety and its subject might unfortunately not be “attractive” for this territory- because it has a lot to offer to north-american populations. We cannot are not coming unchanged out of the projection of this film that both moves and makes its spectators reflect, and it is with excitement that we are waiting for Aliu’s next movie.
Hunting Flies:
Directed by Izer Aliu
With Burhan Amiti
