Rising European nationalism is transforming film directors and movies
The idiosyncratic filmmaking tradition that inspired Italian neorealism and the French New Wave is under pressure as histories are re-invented and old heroes discarded.
By JEFFREY FLEISHMAN/LOS ANGELES TIMES
(TNS) - European cinema is reflecting a continent shaken by immigration, terrorism, identity and faith. But it comes at a time when nationalism and alt-right movements are challenging the artistic freedoms of filmmakers nearly 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of liberal democracy.Existential threats and unsettled ghosts have shaped Europe for centuries, but newly emboldened populist leaders, some of whom echo the blunt nativism of President Trump, have ignited cultural wars aimed at anything that disrupts their self-serving narratives. The idiosyncratic filmmaking tradition that inspired Italian neorealism and the French New Wave is under pressure as histories are re-invented and old heroes discarded.Fears among directors, writers and artists are likely to deepen after Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday. The summit arrived as Trump has damaged relations with European allies while praising Putin, whose authoritarian government in recent years has arrested a prominent Moscow theater director, jailed members of the protest band Pussy Riot and been accused of killing journalists. There are warnings that repressive tactics may spread.“There is now a blacklist of books, theater directors and filmmakers,” Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, whose Ida won an Academy Award for foreign language film in 2015, told the press in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where he won the director award for Cold War (Zimna Wojna). “I have the honor to be on this list. With the new [Polish] government, which has taken control of public television, it is just like under communism.”Polish authorities have denied a blacklist, but Ida, the story of a Jewish orphan raised by Catholic nuns after her parents were killed during World War II, touches on the sensitive question of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.The nationalist government, controlled by Law and Justice Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, amended a bill last month, making it essentially a civil violation to accuse Poland of having had a role in those horrors. It was part of a broader effort by the establishment to whitewash any hint of transgression and celebrate Polish identity.“They are obsessed with rewriting history,” said Agnieszka Holland, a Polish director and Academy Award nominee. “They want to change the history into this heroic, nationalistic legend where all Poles are wonderful and all others are guilty of everything.” She added that the government explored the “quite naïve idea” of producing an epic film on Polish history — spoken in English — that would be distributed by Hollywood.Political harassment against filmmakers is felt across Europe, notably in Russia and former East Bloc countries. Human Rights Watch reported last year that a filmmaker was threatened at a Moscow film festival by Russian ultra-nationalists over her documentary about war in eastern Ukraine. In 2015, right-wing politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky condemned Leviathan, a movie by Andrey Zvyagintsev about Russian corruption, from the floor of the nation’s legislative assembly.‘DARK CLOUDS’It is an era when art is colliding with hardliners and deciphering a world increasingly insecure over political, economic and technological upheaval. A resurgence of nationalist and populist European leaders, including Kaczynski, Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, have played on folklore and tugged their nations to the right. Similarly, ultra-conservative parties in countries such as Germany, Austria and Italy have won more power in government by capitalizing on fears over immigration, crime and terrorism. Headlines evoke “dark clouds” and flashbacks to the 1930s.