International Competition of Feature Films – for grown-ups

Graham Chapman, probably best remembered as “the dead one from Monty Python”, writes and stars in the animated movie of his own life story, A Liar’s Autobiography. He was born, he went to Cambridge and met John Cleese, he smoked a pipe, he became a doctor, he became a Python, he decided he was gay (well, 70/30, according to a survey he did on himself), he got drunk a lot, he stopped being drunk, he made some films, he had some sex (actually, a lot), and moved to Los Angeles. Finally, he was whisked up into space by aliens (although that might have been in a film).

Although Chapman selfishly dropped dead in 1989, he had taken the trouble to record himself reading his book.

Incredible, yes. Surreal, certainly. True? Who knows?

Antonio Farfán is a 46-year-old man working in a notary’s office who has always believed that his personal and professional failure is the inevitable result of his looks: he is bald, short and fat. Though his mind is never silent, his life goes almost uneventfully until the new notary arrives: a fatter, balder and shorter man who, unlike Antonio, is successful and loved by others. Dazed and confused, Antonio is now thrown out into the real world where he faces his own fears and ends up living some pretty unexpected situations.

Don Hertzfeldt has seamlessly combined his three short films about a troubled man named Bill – Everything will be OK (2006), I Am So Proud of You (2008), and It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2011) – into a darkly comedic, beautiful new feature film.

“Because he has worked primarily in the realm of simple line-drawing animation for darkly comic short films, It’s Such a Beautiful Day turns into an astonishing epic of the human experience with mortality and the frailty of the flesh, rendered in the combination of Hertzfeldt’s primitive stick figures, flashes of real-world pictures and a jaw-dropping sound design.”

Scott Renshaw, SLC Weekly

Consuming Spirits is an animated psychological drama created frame by frame with multi-plane cut-out animation and drawings on paper. The sad and occasionally bizarre story chronicles the lives of three characters who live in a rustbelt town called Magusson and work at its local newspaper, The Daily Suggested.

Earl Gray is a tall and formidable, previously handsome, local late-night radio host, publicly notorious for his program and column, Gardeners Corners.

Gentian Violet, 42-year-old newspaper paste-up employee at the paper is a competent but anonymous person. She lives with her aged mother in their house in the town of Magusson, and she is dating Victor Blue.

Victor Blue works at the paper, and has lived his life as a social services project, with every step of his existence set up by his caseworker. He often eats meals, does laundry and even bathes.

The story follows the journey of a convict, Ramon, who has escaped from jail and comes to a remote mountain village along the Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James) searching for a treasure hidden there years earlier. What at first appears to be a deserted town in which only a few elderly people live, turns out to be a village surviving under a curse that has existed for more than 600 years. Ramon soon finds that the harmless elders are actually looking for souls to trade with the Grim Reaper himself. And so begin his adventures to find the treasure, understand the mysterious events taking place in the village, and escape with his life.

In true Agatha Christie suspense style, the story also takes a hidden look into the values and traditions of a culture that is centuries old and is based on the myths and stories of the pilgrimages to Compostela that have been travelled by millions since the 11th century.