AMERICAN MIRROR: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY, the film by Arthur Balder (two-time Latin ACE Award winner for Best Documentary in 2014 and 2016) is part of the official selection of the Guayaquil International Film Festival, biggest event of cinema in all Ecuador whose jury is presided over by prestigious journalist, film theorist and critic Jorge Suárez.
But these are only two of the thirty official selections that the film is still expected to pass through before its theatrical release in the USA. The film won the Audience Award out of 167 films in competition at the Ierapetra Documentary Film Festival, as also the Michel Foucre Award for Best Directing for Arthur Balder.
In the meantime, AMERICAN MIRROR: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY was Finalist at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, one of the best inthe world in its category, winning an “Honorary Jury Mention” there, and distribution offers for TV cable in Australia, New Zealand and Pacific area.
But more importantly the film is Official Selection “Cinema Du Monde” at the Oscar-qualifying 53rd Carthage Film Festival, and at Black Nights Film Festival of Tallinn, Estonia, one of the 15 film festivals that are FIAPF feature competitive in the world. Only in October it will be part of very many interesting screenings across the festival circuit, such as Chesapeake Film Festival, Santa Cruz Film Festival or Burbank International Film Festival in the USA, Tenerife International Festival of Film Music, just to mention a few.
WHAT ARE THE CRITICS SAYING?
Let us share with you some excerpts from Film Inquiry, Australia, on the participation at Melbourne Documentary Film Festival
by film critic Alex Lines:
“American Mirror is (…) a strange beast of a feature”
“an undefinable fever dream of artistic memories”
“Perplexing (…). It definitely shrugs off any expected genre conventions”
“there’s a lingering, finely-drawn intelligence to Arthur Balder’s hallucinogenic compilation, one which welcomes many readings no matter how you look at it”
“with a healthy dose of David Lynch”
“They’re strikingly original, as is the documentary they’re featured within, but again, this film isn’t so much about the art themselves then what the art represents in an allegorical sense”
“American Mirror eschews any traditional documentary formats when attempting to align Balder’s own film theory digressions alongside the scattered memories of his main subject, which makes for a mystifying, if not wholly fascinating experiment”
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Paul Haggis, two-time Academy award-winner screenwriter, director and producer:
“I congratulate you for having made me feel uneasy, for having abandoned the safe zone and tried to go beyond.”
Paul Haggis
Declarations after winners announced by Paul Haggis, who had been Jury President Fabrique Du Cinema Awards 2018, published by Fabrique Du Cinema Awards, Rome, Italy. “American Mirror: Intimations of Immortality” was winner Best International Documentary.
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Published by Fabrique Du Cinema Nr 24, Rome, Italy, March 2019, written by Chiara Carna:
“Arthur Balder is an artist at the same time creative and meticulous. Indicative of it are the stylistic rigor and the aesthetic acumen with which he directed ‘American Mirror’.”
“Susan Sarandon is more charismatic than ever in ‘American Mirror’. ”
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“Arthur Balder wonders what is the true beauty in “American Mirror: Intimations of Immortality”. A very graceful and elegant work.”
The Digital Journal, April 2019, LA, USA.
