Sydney Film Festival - Alena Lodkina's STRANGE COLORS gets some support from an international observer as does Chloe Zhao's THE RIDER

Editor’s Note: The earlier post about the Sydney Film Festival screening of Alena Lodkina’s Strange Colours has caused some international chatter. Here’s some thoughts from a friend who wishes to remain anonymous.  For details of screenings and tickets  click here

Alena Lodkina, Venice, 2017

How does a young woman director capture loneliness and longing in an atmosphere of dust and oblivion, a landscape inhabited only by men? How does she manage to “record” these gruff old guys who act themselves, but under her direction? 

There is a lot of tenderness in this film in a very masculine setting and another recent film by a young lady comes to mind, Chloe Zhao’s The Rider*. It is as if somehow these young women cast a gaze on these “real men” with the piercing but protective eyes of a mother, a grandmother, and these men bare their most vulnerable parts to the gaze. Strange colors indeed, strange and precious.

* ALSO screens at the SFF. Details click here