BIFF Wrap Up - 17 movies in 10 days!

It's now Monday and my BIFF adventure is over for another year.  I closed out the 10 days with two movies yesterday, both of which continued the strong quality for this year.

Movie #16 was "Policeman" which was an Israeli film that the guide said was going to explore the tensions in Israel between the elite anti-terrorism cops and the wealthy young rebels committing terrorist acts within their own state.  However I didn't really feel that it did explore those tensions very well - the movie was essentially two halves, the first following the police but not really getting into why they do what they do, and the second following the young Jewish terrorists which at least did cover their motivations.  When the two come together, the expected happens.  I think it could have been a lot more political but what was on screen was still very interesting and compelling.  The struggles that these terrorists were fighting against are obviously no different from events going on in many parts of the world - very similar to the "Occupy..." protests, which makes it easier to sympathise, but still their actions are criminal and they leave the police very little option.

Movie #17 to cap off this big week was the crazy "Trollhunter" from Norway.  This was a parody of those movies featuring handheld, self-filmed first person experience of monsters or scary events. Such as Cloverfield or Blair Witch.  I can't really explain very well how it was a parody, but it was very funny and it did have a knowing gleam in its eye the whole time.  A group of college kids filming a doco on bear hunters find a more interesting subject in a mysterious individual who disappears into the forest at night and sleeps all day, with a truck covered in bear claw marks.  When they start following him, they accidentally become embroiled in troll hunting.  In this movie, trolls are very real and very scary creatures which the Norwegian government is trying to hide the existence of from the citizens.  Hans is the government's main weapon in this fight, going out at night to neutralize trolls who have stepped out of their normal territory.  This movie was just out and out fun and cool, with the troll mythology being something fresh in a world oversaturated by vampires, werewolves and zombies.  If this comes out, definitely check it out!

So at the end of 10 days and 19 movies (I saw 2 others outside the film festival) I can honestly say I don't have square eyes and I never got sick of it.  The quality this year was very high and there were so many others I could have seen without budget constraints and if I could clone myself to be in two places at once.  I didn't see anything that I didn't like this year, everything was either good, great or awesome!  My top 3 movies would have been Comic-Con, Medianeras and Manborg.  One of the things I also enjoyed was spotting the same people over and over again in the audience, so that I knew I'm not so crazy, there are others who take a week off to sit in a darkened cinema and be surprised over and over. See you next year film buffs!