After Hours screening - review - MEN SHOW MOVIES AND WOMEN THEIR BREAST by Isabell Suba

When her short film Chica XX Mujer was picked for the Cannes Film Festival, German filmmaker Isabell Suba didn’t just sit back and enjoy the ride. She planned out how she could make the most out of the experience by shooting a film right from what is arguably the biggest, most glamorous and most talked about film festival of all. What she did was ingenious and even rebellious. She sent an actress Anna Haug to pose as her and went along to shoot situations based on her true experiences. 

The result is a satirical mockumentary about a filmmaker and a producer presenting their film at the Cannes event that explores the less glamorous side of the festival and looks at the disparity and disenchantment that a filmmaker on the rise with little reputation could experience. It also extensively deals with a certain sexual discrimination in cinema, a theory strengthened by the fact that in that particular edition of the Cannes Film Festival, there were no films directed by female directors in the main competition. 

Shot in the course of five days, with no budget, this feature represents the crème de la crème of guerrilla filmmaking. And what is more is that by virtue of the provocative title Men Show Movies and Women Their Breast, Suba follows up and supports her being provocative with believable theories by being quirky but also very down to Earth and realistic about the subject at hand. One must also highlight a brave kind of irreverence towards the hierarchy of film festival. All the while, its matter of fact behaviour towards a side of film festivals and the film industry in general – as well as one that isn’t talked about very often – should probably have Suba’s film institutionalised and shown to film students who decide to pursue a career under false pretences. 

Some of the conversations drag and then there may be a whole argument about the relationship between the filmmaker and the producer being uncomfortable, as well as the individual characters being pretty stubborn and unlikable. But that is faithful to the whole realistic approach which, at the end of the day, Suba chooses to approach. Interesting and captivating, Men Show Movies and Women Their Breast may not have any breast in the explicit sense of the term, but it certainly makes its statement loud and clear.