Film tips week 41
Kosmorama recommends quality films for this week. You can watch these titles either on the big screen or on various streaming services! This week’s theme is revisiting films previously featured at Kosmorama!
The President's Cake (En kake til presidenten)
Where: Trondheim kino
Nine-year-old Lamia is given a seemingly innocent task: to bake a cake for President Saddam Hussein’s birthday. But Iraq is crippled by both Western sanctions and the president’s iron grip, resulting in severe food shortages. Together with her loyal rooster, Lamia embarks on a perilous journey to gather the ingredients.
Director Hasan Hadi draws on his own childhood memories to create this fable, in which the struggle for a simple cake mirrors an entire population’s fight against hunger, fear, and oppression. The cinematography lends poetic weight to 1990s Iraq, from marshland waterways to chaotic city streets.
Despite its harsh backdrop, the film conjures a warm and adventurous world filled with humor. The non-professional actors bring authenticity, and the charming rooster steals every scene it appears in.
© Selmer Media
Broken English
Where: Cinemateket i Trondheim
This unconventional documentary about Marianne Faithfull is framed by a fictional device: Faithfull is summoned to the “Ministry of Not Forgetting,” led by Tilda Swinton, where she is asked to reflect on six decades of music, fame, and resistance. Through conversations, archival footage, and musical highlights, the film traces her breakthrough as a young star in the 1960s, her downfall and struggles with addiction, and the powerful comeback that defined her later career. Reality and fantasy merge in what would become a fitting finale to Faithfull’s artistic life
© NonStop Entertainment
The Sweet East
Hvor: Strømming (Filmoteket)
After Lillian runs away from a school trip to Washington D.C., she embarks on a journey that could perhaps best be described as a kind of "Alice in a pretty damn messed-up American wonderland." She chases after many peculiar rabbits and takes us on a surreal adventure, where she encounters anarchistic punks, conspiratorial neo-Nazis, radical Muslims, narcissistic filmmakers, and a polarized society.
Cinematographer Sean Price Williams has made a sensuous, bittersweet, and marvelous debut as director, shot on exquisite textured 16mm film. Rising star Talia Ryder shines at the forefront of an otherwise idiosyncratic cast, including Jacob Elordi, Ayo Edebiri, and veteran Simon Rex. The result is a unique cinematic experience where the American dream is as much a nightmare, and you can never quite predict what kind of crazy twist awaits around the next corner.
© Another World Entertainment
