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Wim Wenders shows the bad trip of a guy who has only ten minutes to save his life... and a few miles to drive to the nearest hospital! Under the effects of drugs, the road unravels a procession of hallucinations, everything bathed in an unreal ochre light. A success. Jim Jarmusch returns with edgy icon Chloé Sévigny for a pretty short film shot in black and white, depicting the loneliness of a movie star. The actress has ten minutes to rest in her trailer, have a meal and call her friend. Her privacy will be disturbed regularly by the film crew. Victor Erice also shoots a remarkably controlled work in black and white. During a hot afternoon on a farm in Spain, everyone is busy. A young mother sleeps near her baby, who is wounded. He will be saved, while far away a much larger threat appears: the rise of Nazism. Erice uses a smooth and inspired editing. The film leaves its mark thanks to a happy outcome that immediately contradicts the following sequence. Faithful to his minimalist and absurd universe, Aki Kaurismaki—surrounded by his fetish actors—films the departure of a newlywed young couple for Siberia. In the end, the man gives one last nostalgic glance towards his country. Werner Herzog chooses not to show a ten-minute advance in time, but rather ten thousand years. A few years ago, a primitive ethnic group had been discovered in Brazil and filmed. Two years later, Herzog decides to go meet them and see the results of their contact with civilization. The consequences are terrible. Naked during their first appearance, the indigenous people now wear American caps, jeans and t-shirts. The community is near extinction and the younger generations live in the city. Those who used to make fire by rubbing wood and were afraid of the flame of a lighter, have discovered cars, television... and sex with white women, whites that they had made a specialty of killing before. This is the most gripping and successful film of the series. Herzog's mythical Aguirre, and the Wrath of God inevitably comes to mind. Chen Kaige disappoints, despite a very poetic history. In a China under reconstruction, a man asks movers to ensure the transport of his furniture. On their arrival, a waste ground: the house only exists in the imagination of the insane, sad and nostalgic old man whose fragile spirit did not resist the changes of his country. A story too excessive in trying to provide easy emotions to the spectator. Finally, Spike Lee delivers one of his best productions, a documentary about the last American presidential elections that saw the scandal of the ballot recount. Lee questions the witnesses of this historic misfiring and shows that the elections were rigged from beginning to end. The film ends with one of the protagonists saying "we were fucked". There is no ambiguity! In the same way, Lee's nervous and incisive film does not leave any doubt about the scam of which everyone was the victim. There was seat shifting and sharp reactions in the theater during the screening, as this film finds an echo with the recent French elections.
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