Going for the optimal cinematic experience, I decide to see the Italian film The Waltz for my first film of the day. The pre-screening buzz was that the 85-minute film was shot as a single sequence, meaning that there are no cuts, and the story takes place in real time. The questions on many festival goers’ minds: how is that possible? and would that even be interesting to watch?

Although the formal accomplishments of the film will no doubt dominate any future discussions, it must be noted that The Waltz is not a victim of style over substance. Shooting in a hotel in Turin, the camera follows employees and guests, weaving in and out of storylines. Particular focus is on Assunta (Valeria Solarino), a maid who is haunted by the fates or her former co-workers, and a man (Maurizio Michelli) who has come to visit his daughter Lucia (Marina Rocco), a friend of Assunta’s, unaware that Lucia has not worked there for years. Director Salvatore Maira deftly handles his diverse cast, establishing parallel themes among the different stories. He manages several flashback scenes, fluidly manipulating each transition in time.

I would have more to comment on the film were it not that I was seated in the second row. The screen completely engulfed my vision, and with the perpetually roving camera, which sometimes felt like it was doing pirouettes keeping up with the actors, I got motion sickness an hour into the film.

After the screening, the director, producer Gianmario Feletti, and actress Rocco appeared for the Q&A. Many of the questions focused on Maira’s decision to shoot the film in one continuous shot.

In order to shoot the film, he first rehearsed the camera without the actors, then with the cast, and finally, with the production staff. Rocco noted that one mistake would set back the production for at least half a day. Ten takes were shot in all, and Maira laughingly revealed it took two months to decide the best take.

After a quick lunch, I went to the press-only screening of the Japanese film, Beauty. Set in 1935 in Nagano, the film focuses on the relationship between two boys, Yukio, a performer in the local kabuki theatre, and Hanji who lives with his grandfather, a wood carver who provides all the props for the kabuki productions. Encouraged by Yukio, Hanji becomes his partner on the stage, playing the female lead (called onnnagata) to Yukio’s male lead. The film spans eight decades, during which the boys are sent off to war, and their relationship is fractured by a love triangle with a girl from childhood, Utako (Kumiko Aso).

But it is the depiction of kabuki that makes Beauty unique. In sharp contrast to the hushed, reverent audience of kabuki theatres today, local kabuki productions are depicted as raucous affairs, with the whole village turning up and yelling good-naturedly at the performers. The fierce bond between kabuki actors and onnagata (“We’ll always be together on the stage.”) is also depicted, blurring the line between heterosexual friendship and homosexuality.

The film is hampered by alternately wooden and comically exaggerated performances. Played by real-life kabuki actors Takataro Kataoka and Ainosuke Kataoka, the “boys” not only make no distinction between film acting and kabuki acting, they are also burdened with horrendous wigs when playing their older counterparts.

An evening series of short interviews with a handful of directors took place on the outside stage. The moderator asked the directors about their advice to aspiring filmmakers. Japanese director Masahiro Kobayashi, the writer/director of The Rebirth, spoke of the importance of studying film, and cheerfully recalled his past as a young man in love with movies. He would crouch next to the speakers in the cinema, tape recording the dialogue of Truffaut films. He would then write his own version of the screenplay. “I think you can still do something like that today,” he said flippantly, ever the disciplined rebel.