2007 AFI Fest Recap: Fest faves, Commentary and Winners

The 2007 AFI Fest ended with the screening of Love in the Time of Cholera and the announcement of this year's winners with the politically correct choice of Munyurangabo, an uneven drama set in Rwanda by a Korean-American director was a surprise given the strong line up this year. The tie between Operation Filmmaker and Afghan Muscles was justified, both were evocative and timely, dealing with an Iraqi film student and the other about Afghan body builders.

Winners pictured above are: From left to Right: Jenny Lund (MUNYURANGABO), Nash Edgerton (SPIDER), Lauren Greenfield (KIDS + MONEY), Jeffrey Schwarz (SPINE TINGLER! THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY), Andreas Mol Dalsgaard (AFGHAN MUSCLES), Micheal Addis (HECKLER).

The line up was one of the strongest in years including many films from Cannes (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,  Persepolis, Silent Light, Jellyfish, Caramel, Secret Sunshine and others) and Berlin (Irina Palm, The Counterfeiters and The Duchess of Langais) making their US debuts.

We were fortunate to interview the winners of the documentary competition in USA's Nina Davenport from Operation Filmmaker and Denmark's Andreas Dalsgaard from Afghan Muscles. I also interviewed director Julian Schnabel, writer Ronald Harwood and actors Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze and the legendary Max von Sydow of the audience winner “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”. Others I interviewed included Canada's Dean DeBlois, Mexico's  Aaron Fernandez of Used Parts, Norway's Bard Berein of The Art of Negative Thinking and Germany's Andrea Kreuzhage of 1000 Journals. Click on the movie posters to read the interviews.

 

           

 

         

The feature films I highly recommend are: The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Persepolis, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Caramel, The Art of Negative Thinking, Used Parts and Chop Shop, while on the documentary front be sure to look out for: Sigur Ros-Heima, Afghan Muscles, Operation Filmmaker, Orange Revolution and Strange Culture.

The festival is a walk in the park compared to Cannes – the one location makes it easy to maneuver. I had a good time and easy access but was shut out from covering the opening, centerpieces, tributes and closing night galas – the packed shows meant that there wasn't enough tickets for other press outlets such as this one. The festival is more targeted for the paying audience and industry professionals (given the opening spots given to the high profile yet lackluster titles such as Lions for Lambs and Love at Times of Cholera) than the press. It was also difficult to find a quiet place for the interviews since there's movie soundtracks playing at the entire Arclight Theatres structure at any given time of the day. It's a great festival to catch up on films if you missed Cannes, Berlin and Toronto.

Yama Rahimi is IONCINEMA.com's Los Angeles film correspondent. He is in preparation for his next feature length film and is launching the non-profit Zamen International on Nov 13 in Hollywood.