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As the film festival reviews trickle in from the winners of the iCarabout CIFF contest, I’ll be posting them here for everyone to read! This first one is from Mike Butz (@mikebutz) about the film he saw on the last day of the Cleveland International Film Festival.  Here’s what he had to say about “Headhunter”:

There are two sides of loneliness — one that breaks you down and one that makes you stronger.”

Spoken by one of the movie’s main characters — the patriarchal leader of Denmark’s largest shipping and oil company — that quote seemed to embody the main theme behind “Headhunter,” the film my friend Kyle and I saw at the Cleveland International Film Festival using the vouchers I won from Cara and her blog, iCarabout.com.

The main character, Martin Vinge, is a professional headhunter who’s the best in his field for finding new CEOs for companies. He’s called upon by the aforementioned oil and shipping leader, N.F. Sieger, who’s aging and in poor health and doesn’t feel like his son, Daniel Sieger, has what it takes to be CEO when he’s gone. Vinge soon gets caught in the middle of a power struggle between father and son regarding the future of the company.

In the background, Vinge must deal with his son’s illnesses, which requires the kind of specialized services that only his work with the Siegers can pay for. Throughout the course of the movie, that adoption process for Vinge’s son plays out. Vinge encouraged his ex-wife’s new husband to officially adopt the young boy, though he softens on that as the film progresses. The relationship between Vinge and his son running parallel to the relationship between the Siegers makes for an interesting comparison in the film.

The loneliness each character feels seems to define them and their relationships with others.

All in all, I was very pleased with the Danish film. I always feel like seeing a film at the festival is a hit-or-miss proposition since I never know much more about it outside of what’s written in the festival program. In this case, what caught my eye was that Vinge was listed as a hard-hitting journalist — and journalism is the field in which I work. And while it turned out that journalism played only a secondary role in this film, I was still very satisfied with it.

It was filled with suspense. Sometimes I fall into the trap of trying to predict what will happen next in a film, and to the credit of “Headhunter,” I was unable to do so. Even when I thought I had a certain twist or turn figured out, the movie bluffed and took things in a different direction.

The biggest drawback for me was the ending. Or rather, the very ending. The suspense lasted throughout, but once everything came to a close, there was this sort of too-good-to-be-true endings in which all the major players got what they were after throughout the film. So I spent about 90 minutes hanging on through all the ups, down, gains and losses these characters endured only to have everything wrap up nice and tidy in the last 10 minutes. That didn’t ruin the film for me, but it was a bit of a let down.

As for the festival itself, the atmosphere was, well, festive. I saw the film on Sunday, March 28 — the final day of the festival. In fact, the whole experience started with a little self-induced panic on Saturday because I hadn’t yet exchanged my vouchers for tickets. And by that point, I expected most every film would be on stand-by. Thankfully, “Headhunter” still had tickets available.

Cleveland International Film Festival | Mike Butz | Cleveland, OH

I got to the theater about 30 minutes before the start time and only had about 20 people or so ahead of me in line. As I waited, I overheard several conversations about what films others had seen and enjoyed. A popular one seemed to be “Bananas.” Others talked about what films they were still planning to see later that evening, while yet others spoke of film festivals past.

Also, I saw the 1:45 showing, which was at a time when many Cavs fans were walking through Tower City on their way to The Q to see Zydrunas Ilgauskas play his first home game since returning to the team following being traded a month ago. So between the festival goers and Cavs fans, there was a certain energy in Tower City. Once inside and seated in the theater, our audience gave a nice round of applause once the volunteer announced, “Let’s start another round.”

Indeed. I wish I could’ve been at the festival for more rounds of films, but as it turned out, seeing “Headhunter” on the final day of the festival was my only trip this year. That had more to do with my schedule, not the festival — which remains accessible to me and my fellow Clevelanders. In fact, I’m already looking forward to next year.

Tags: CIFF, Cleveland Arts, Cleveland Cinemas, Cleveland International Film Festival, iCarabout winners, Movies

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