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International Premiere: The Selfish Giant by Clio Barnard

The feature film The Selfish Giant, which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival 2013, was presented this afternoon at the 11^th edition of FICM. On behalf of Clio Barnard, director of the film, British critic Nick Roddick introduced the film. Well-known critic and filmmaker Jonathan Romney was also present at the screening.

In The Selfish Giant, 13-year-old Arbor, who tries to defend his friend Swifty from other kids who are bullying him, is expelled from school along with Swifty. They become scavengers, and begin collecting scrap metal using a horse and cart. They must answer to Kitten, a scrap dealer who exploits workers.

Roddick shared his impression having seen the gritty film. “I was in shock for 15 minutes, just moving my head, looking at the screen without being able to say more than one word which I cannot repeat.”

He spoke of how many critics have become filmmakers, as is the case of Jonathan Romney, who is both a critic and a film director. Jokingly, Roddick recommended that if someone is in London and wants to see the film, he shouldn’t buy the newspaper where Romney writes.

The short film The Absence by Jonathan Romney was shown before the screening. Romney said his short film “deals with the strange things that cinema can exert on us.”

“The story of my short is about a man who watches a 1961 Italian film called The Absence,” he said. “The man in the short discovers that a person that looks just like him appears in the Italian film. He becomes obsessed and wants to discover who this person is and to find him.”

The story is similar to that of the book by Portuguese writer José Saramago, “The Double” (2002) where Máximo Tertuliano Afonso, a high school history teacher becomes obsessed with meeting an actor who looks exactly like him. He looks for him by every means possible. They finally meet and have the opportunity to see their similarities face to face.

“I saw in the FICM catalog that there is also a Mexican short called The Absence,” he added. “So my short also has its double.”