Officially its full title is the International Exhibition of the Cinematographic Arts, yet the top prize at this year’s edition of the Venice Film Festival could be handed to a film destined to barely see the inside of a cinema, but will be available to watch on laptops, tablets and mobile phones from the moment it is released on Oct. 16.
Beasts of No Nation, filmmaker Cary Fukunaga’s child soldier drama, is the first Netflix feature film to be included in competition for a major film prize.
And regardless of whether or not it wins, the fact that a video-on-demand service has been able to place its content at the heart of the world’s oldest film festival is being seen as something of a landmark moment for an industry on the cusp of far-reaching change in the way its output is consumed.
Photo: AP
Festival director Alberto Barbera said he had not hesitated about including Beasts in the 21-strong selection of films competing for the Golden Lion. Streaming-based distribution services are becoming important sources of finance for filmmaking and “we can’t ignore them,” he said.
Cinema owners are less open-minded with many refusing to provide slots for films simultaneously released to Internet subscribers on the grounds that this could kill the culture of going out to see films on a big screen — and sooner or later put them out of business.
In the case of a film like Beasts the issue is arguably moot since the challenging nature of the film means it was only ever likely to get a limited, art-house cinema run.
However, it is a question that can only become more acute as the volume and range of original production from online distributors expands.
Netflix has already signed Adam Sandler up to make four films for them, and the company has funded the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel The Green Legend — now due to be released early next year, possibly with an eye on Netflix’s planned expansion in Asia.
Meanwhile Amazon Prime have commissioned Spike Lee to make their first Oscar-eligible feature, a musical comedy about gun crime in Chicago called Chiraq. Lee once described the idea of watching a film on a mobile phone as “heartbreaking.”
Fukunaga spent more than a decade developing his project to make a film about child soldiers, an issue he first became interested in when studying neo-colonialism as an undergraduate.
He says Netflix’s offer to buy the film had been “in the Godfather way, an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
“Of course I still want people to see it in the cinema, but more than anything I want as many people as possible to see the movie,” he said.
The chances of that happening, he argues, are far greater with access to Netflix’s 65 million-strong subscriber base as a back-up to a cinema release that could easily end with the film just disappearing.
“It wasn’t a no-brainer, I wouldn’t say that, but it was undeniably powerful,” he said.
“And ultimately it comes down to consumer choice — if audiences want to see drama in the cinema, they have to show up,” he said.
Set in an unidentified West African country and shot in 22 different locations in Ghana, Beasts unflinchingly recounts the story of Agu, a happy-go-lucky boy whose joyous existence as part of a loving family is turned on its head after his village in a UN-protected buffer zone is overrun by government troops seeking to quell a rebellion.
His mother and sister are dispatched to a nearby city, but Agu, played by newcomer Abraham Attah, is left behind to witness the killing of his brother and father.
He narrowly escapes with his life only to be captured in the bush by a group of rebels under the leadership of Commandant, a charismatic figure played by Idris Elba.
Taken under Commandant’s wing, what remains of Agu’s innocence is soon stripped away by the brutality of his daily existence, his initiation into the youthful battalion completed when he obeys an order to hack a university student to death with repeated machete blows to his head.
Such scenes make Fukunaga’s piece a testing view, but the film has been well-received and he has won praise for raising an issue he has wanted to dramatize for over a decade.
“The violence depicted in the film is nowhere near as violent as in real life,” he said.
“Real war is gruesome,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in