29/01/2007

Over the weekend, the International Film Festival Rotterdam premiered three films that dealt with prostitution, either literally or symbolically. Aleksi Salmenperä’s Finnish A Man’s Job (Miehen työ) was the most obvious example, a dramatic comedy about a man who is afraid to tell his depressed wife he has been fired and ends up selling his body to older women to feed his family.

As in the director’s previous film, Producing Adults, it situates itself at the intersection of family life and sexual antics, though now it is even more compact, with an intelligent screenplay and heartfelt performances.

A Man’s Job was produced by Blind Spot Pictures, who also handle international sales. It had backing from the Finnish Film Foundation and will be released in Finland on February 23 through Sandrew Metronome.

In Italian screenwriter-turned-director Carmine Amoroso’s Cover Boy, an illegal Romanian immigrant and a legal immigrant from the Italian south try to make a living in Rome’s underbelly and forge a friendship. Trying to eke out a worthy existence, both have to face the hard reality that the lowest classes are often exploited in more ways than one.

Amoroso is not completely successful in tying all his themes together, but Cover Boy offers a lot to chew on. The film was produced by Filand and Paco Cinematografia and is sold internationally by Istituto Luce.

The first Balkan dogma film, Does it Hurt from Macedonian director Aneta Lesnikovska, presents itself as "reality based on fiction" and purports to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the first Balkan dogma, though in reality there is no such project and the directors’ friends are duped into believing they could become stars. They are willing to go a very long way to become famous, like contestants on a reality TV show, of which Does it Hurt seems to be an extrapolation.

The film is part of the IFFR Tiger Competition and was produced by Concordia Pictures, NFI Productions and AKA Film and is being sold internationally by the latter.