Film adaptation of W.G. Sebald’s novel “Austerlitz”, directed by the Czech-born French director Stan Neumann and starring Denis Lavant as Jacques Austerlitz, the film is described as “not so much a filmed book as it is a film about a book, breaking down the walls that divide documentary and fiction, just as Sebald blurred the lines between the two in his writing”.Read More »
Six friends hire a medium to hold a seance via Zoom during lockdown, but they get far more than they bargained for as things quickly go wrong.Read More »
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With the innocuously titled Sweet Dreams (Fai bei sogni), Italian director Marco Bellocchio stages a gentle, eminently watchable return to some of the key themes that have haunted his 50 years of filmmaking, particularly the scarring left by a dysfunctional family and maternal love gone awry. The story of a 9-year-old boy who loses his beloved mother is a much simpler, more direct film than the thematically rich My Mother’s Smile (2002), and has none of the churning family anger of Fists in His Pocket (1965). But based on journalist Massimo Gramellini’s best-selling autobiographical novel, it has an emotional unity and urgency that holds the attention, only flagging in the last innings of a surprisingly compact drama running well over two hours.Read More »
A deaf teenager struggles to fit into the boarding school system.
Set in a Ukrainian school for the deaf and mute, The Tribe follows new student Sergey as he gets a crash course in who’s really in charge. The decrepit institution is awash in drugs, prostitution and organized petty crime. This incredible film has one particularly daring aspect: it is acted entirely in sign language without the aid of subtitles or voice-over. The audience follows the story through the physicality of the performances and the emphatic intensity of the signing. Heightened by a hormone-laced narrative, with kids engaging in explicit sex and violence, The Tribe is an unforgettable cinematic experience, from its epic, wordless opening shot to the brutal finale.Read More »
A convict returns to his home town to again torture his family, face his neighbors and try to destroy the local religious fanatics and their plans to keep money from the village people.Read More »
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A stray cat Teofrastus finds loving owners. Finally he has his very own territory in their country-house and he is happy and secure. But this happiness won’t last! When the fall comes, the new owners move to town, together with Teofrastus. On one gray day when Teofrastus is watching birds on the balcony of an apartment house, he just accidentally jumps down and gets lost among the very same-looking houses in a new block of the city. Will he find his owners and his own territory again? Or will the cold streets and indifferent looks from the strangers be his lot?Read More »
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The new work by the gifted Gustavo Fontán (El árbol, La madre, La casa) concerns a man sailing alone on the Parana River. That is until he reaches an island and shares some time with his father, a woman, and some kids. And nature itself, the lead character in all its blossoming. Shot in Super 8, 16 mm, and video, El rostro is a beautifully refined, melancholic sensorial experience that successfully defies the boundaries of narrative cinema; a poetic meditation on moods, longings and absences.Read More »
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Frustrated with the limits placed upon her because of her gender, a small-town Saudi doctor takes matters into her own hands and runs for local council, in this family drama from Haifaa Al-Mansour (Wadjda, Mary Shelley).
After her debut feature Wadjda (2012) broke new ground as the first-ever film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia — and the first made by a Saudi woman — director Haifaa Al-Mansour shifted to Hollywood with the TIFF-selected biopic Mary Shelley (2017) and Netflix’s Nappily Ever After (2018). Now, she returns to the kingdom with The Perfect Candidate, a tale of one woman’s quest to challenge not only the system but also herself.Read More »
