I’m back at TIFF for the third year in a row! The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most celebrated and prestigious film festivals for a reason. But while many note its ability to predict Oscar nominees, I’ve found over the years that the real strength is in the breadth of programming. There are over 200 titles each year and that means a wide variety of big name films and plenty of hidden gems.
This year, I’ll be continuing a practice I started with this past Sundance, where every morning this piece will be updated with the new films I’ve watched or the new films that have had their press embargoes lifted. In addition to these mini capsule reviews, at least one full review will also publish.
The films here will include queer titles I didn’t want to write a lot about, but it will also include everything I watch. I love writing about queer cinema, but I also think there’s a lot of value in queer people analyzing art that may not be explicitly for us.
Mistress Dispeller (dir. Elizabeth Lo)
Mistress Dispeller is a miracle of documentary filmmaking. It is a film with footage that could only be captured by deception, yet only released after an ethical approach to permission.
The film follows Teacher Wang, a woman who works as a “mistress dispeller,” hired by wives who are being cheated on to intervene and break up their husbands’ affairs. But as manipulative as this may appear, Wang’s approach has a surprising sense of empathy. Rather than view the mistresses as an enemy, Wang views them as lonely and misguided.
That’s certainly the case in the central love triangle of the film. Elizabeth Lo had the wife’s permission from the beginning, but the husband and mistress were told they were simply part of a documentary about modern love in China. With a reserved and accomplished formal technoque, Lo captures the relationships on-screen with a lack of judgment fitting for Wang. All of the subjects are vulnerable and wise, and the kindness and skill of everyone involved might explain why the husband and mistress agreed to the film after being told the truth.
On-screen and in life, we want relationships and conflicts to have heroes and villains. But in this film and in Teacher Wang’s work, we’re all just human.
A Sisters’ Tale (dir. Leila Amini)
Leila Amini’s sister Nasreen dreams of being a singer despite Iran’s laws against women singing in public. Her desire to sing is both literal and an apt metaphor for her deeper desire. She wants her freedom — freedom to sing, freedom from her loveless marriage, freedom to look out for herself without hurting her loved ones.
By having the sort of access granted by making a documentary about one’s own family, Amini is able to deepen her film beyond its against-all-odds inspirational story. The best moments of the film are when Nasreen’s children — especially her son — are struggling with the repercussions of Nasreen’s goals. Real sacrifice is required, by Nasreen and those around her. But Nasreen rightfully believes to be the best mother possible she can’t raise her kids in an unhappy home, she can’t model for them someone who is passive. It’s a bold and powerful statement for her to value a life beyond survival. And it makes for a compelling documentary filled with nuance and love.
Went Up the Hill (dir. Samuel Van Grisen)
The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat)
Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance succeeds in doing what it sets out to do exceptionally well. Unfortunately, I hated what it was doing.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an Oscar winner now workout TV show personality who has just turned 50. When she gets booted by a grotesque exec (Dennis Quaid, presumably playing himself), she is tempted into taking an experimental treatment called The Substance. This drug will unlock another self — a younger, more perfect self played by Margaret Qualley — but the rule is seven days on, seven days off. They each must adhere to this schedule otherwise there will be disastrous side effects.
In fact, there is no each. They are one. This is reiterated again and again by the mysterious creators of the drug/experience. It’s here where the film finds its most interesting threads. Watching these two different yet the same women navigate their symbiotic connection is fascinating and frightening.
Where the film is less successful is in its satire. From the beginning, the world of the film is given an unreality by the suggestion that it snows in LA. And so, The Industry here is played entirely in archetypes. Like the concert in Trap having multiple intermissions, we’re supposed to accept that the hottest show on TV is a workout video simply because men like to ogle breasts. Fair enough. I don’t mind a heightening. The problem is the heightening here hits such easy targets. The commentary about male gaze and Hollywood’s value of youth is shallow and tired. It’s not inaccurate; it’s just not particularly clever or interesting. If the feminism in Barbie felt 101, this is an Instagram infographic for people too lazy to sign up for the introductory course.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe Fargeat is emphasizing the the boredom of this sexism. (Although at a film festival where Demi Moore is joined by performers like Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, one might question if skinny white actresses in their 50s still face the limitations of a decade ago.) The problem with this simple feminism other than its boredom is the film undermines its own perspective. 50-year-olds who look like Demi Moore are celebrated, but the film finds much of its horror in the grotesquery of even older bodies, as well as deformities. Elisabeth Sparkle should learn to love herself, yes, but what about women who look more like the film’s monsters?
The film makes allusions to Old Hollywood monster movies like Frankenstein and Freaks and it’s possible we’re supposed to feel conflicted about the horror inspired by what’s on-screen — even if my audience did not. But I’m sure audiences in the 30s reacted with the same disgust, so that is not something I can necessarily blame on filmmaking that is, to be fair, trying to hold up a mirror to society.
The Substance plays out its narrative to its ultimate conclusion and then takes it four steps further. As a work of body horror and formal relentlessness, it’s an accomplished film. But for a movie that won Best Screenplay at Cannes, it relies too much on its performances and that style to make up for writing that, well, lacks in substance.
Demi Moore in The Substance
Paying For It (dir. Sook-Yin Lee)
There are limits to a film that aims to destigmatize sex work without focusing on the sex workers themselves. But that’s why Sook-Yin Lee’s wisest choice in adapting her ex-partner and close friend Chester Brown’s graphic novel Paying For It is in making herself a bigger character. Instead of feeling like a portrait of a john, it ends up being a portrait of Chester and “Sonny,” two lonely people who love each other but still yearn for deeper intimacy.
While Sonny searches for this intimacy by jumping from one bad boyfriend to the next, Chester gives up on romance altogether opting instead to begin seeing sex workers with an almost clinical remove. Chester’s crew of comic artist friends and Sonny’s wise lesbian bestie have questions and judgments about each approach, but the film itself does not. Sonny and Chester are presented just as they are, their desires and choices all too human.
Lee creates a portrait of late 90s/early 00s Toronto that has an artful flatness well-suited for its source material. Each romantic and/or sexual pairing is presented as another chapter, another era in life for these characters and their city. Daniel Beirne as Chester and Emily Lê as Sonny ground their pointedly frustrating characters with very strong performances. Both Chester and Sonny could appear cruel in their occasional coldness, and yet Beirne and Lê keep them charming — and human — even in their worst moments.
I’m not sure this is a successful film about sex work, but it is a successful film about intimacy, loneliness, and unlikely romance.
Do I Know You From Somewhere? (dir. Arianna Martinez)
I really wanted to like this film that is like if a Charlie Kauffman movie was about a bisexual woman rather than the dopey man she’s dating. But where the film succeeds in tone and structure, it fails in specificity.
On the day Olive (Caroline Bell) and Benny (Ian Ottis Goff) are set to celebrate their anniversary, both begin to experience strange occurrences. Olive can’t find — or remember — the gift she got him and Benny is seeing numerical fridge magnets appear out of nowhere. There seem to be cracks in the multiverse and as Olive and Benny jump back and forth in time and timeline, we do the same.
The problem is even Olive and Benny’s meet cute at a wedding feels copy-pasted from any number of middling romcoms. They have a mundane chemistry that’s fitting for where they’re at in their relationship, but there are no details to either character or to their dynamic to make them feel grounded as real people. As a result, the film feels like it’s about a Bisexual Woman, Her Boyfriend, and The Woman She Could Have Dated rather than about Olive specifically. Every character is an archetype and this may have worked had the film leaned into a stylization a la Last Year at Marienbad — alas it opts instead for a standard indie dramedy script.
Only Mallory Amirault as Olive’s alternate life girlfriend manages to give her character some depth. By the time we finally see her and Olive together, there’s no doubt which timeline is preferable. Some queer audiences might relish this outcome, but in a movie primarily focusing on the relationship between Olive and Benny, I wanted to feel the pain of their separation. Instead, I just felt relief.
Bonjour Tristesse (dir. Durga Chew-Bose)
Hard Truths (dir. Mike Leigh)
For decades, Mike Leigh has been one of our great humanists, granting empathy to every person who appears on his screen.
His method is in itself an act of empathy. Rather than provide his actors with a traditional script or rely on them to improvise, he’s developed a two-part process that begins with improvisation to inspire his writing. This results in films that feel like true collaborations, the characters brought to life through multiple sources, but with thought and structure.
While Hard Truths finds Mike Leigh reuniting with Secrets and Lies lead Marianne Jean-Baptiste, this film has more in common with Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky. While that film focused on the ultimate optimist, here Jean-Baptiste plays the ultimate pessimist — a woman angry and terrified at the world.
Jean-Baptiste is remarkable as she oscillates between hilarity and heartbreak. Her character is exhausting, but the film makes it clear it’s more accurate to say she’s exhausted. This is a difficult film, but one that moved me immensely, and made me want to extend kindness to those incapable to do so.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths
The Room Next Door (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story (dir. Sinéad O’Shea)
Portrait documentaries about artists often have two audiences: people who are fans and people for whom the film is their first introduction. Watching Sinéad O’Shea’s well-constructed film about Irish writer Edna O’Brien, I was the latter. The name was familiar, but I’ve read none of her books and seen none of the movies they inspired.
It speaks to the success of the film that I left wanting to read them all. While conventional in its approach, the film provides a thorough portrait of O’Brien’s life and work, balancing interviews with her family and admirers, interviews with the author herself, archival footage, and her memoir as read by Jessie Buckley. I’m not sure how the film will play for big fans of O’Brien, but as a newcomer I felt like I received an understanding of who she was both as a person and an artist.
O’Brien died earlier this summer and her interviews hold an honesty of someone nearing the end of their life. There’s a mix of melancholy and pride from this woman who achieved so much in a life that had both glamor and struggle. It’s these interviews that elevate the film beyond its conventions.
Winter in Sokcho (dir. Koya Kamura)
You’ve heard the story before. A melancholy man travels somewhere far from home and meets a young woman who reinvigorates his lust for life. It’s a story graphic novelist Yan Kerrand (Roschdy Zem) has seemingly written again. But this is not his film. For once, Yan is the supporting character in someone else’s story.
Koya Kamura’s film, based on the novel of the same name by Elisa Shua Dusapin, is about Soo-ha (Bella Kim), a young woman who works at the small hotel in Sokcho where Yan decides to stay. Soo-ha took French in college as a way of connecting with her absent French father so she becomes a de facto guide for Yan. She’s drawn to him, a confused mix of lust and paternal yearning. He’s happy to use her interest as long as it remains on his terms.
This is a quiet film, anchored by Kamura’s confident filmmaking and Kim’s layered performance. There are few if any major revelations — Kim and Zem look very different, as if to squelch any speculation their relation is where the film is headed — opting instead to examine Soo-ha at this stagnant moment in her life. She is trying to figure out her desires with a block she blames on not knowing her father.
In one of Yan’s books and many other films of this nature, Soo-ha might work through this block due to some heightened circumstance. But often in life, we work through these moments with self-reflection and smaller encouragements. Some may leave the film wanting more, but I felt fulfilled getting to spend time in this story on Soo-ha’s terms.
Diciannove (dir. Giovanni Tortorici)
First time filmmaker Giovanni Tortorici previously worked on two Luca Guadagnino projects before the famed director came onto this as a producer. Guadagnino’s influence is felt with the film at its best feeling like if Call Me By Your Name was shot like Challengers. Like his mentor, Tortorici isn’t afraid to make bold directorial choices and it leads to exciting cinema.
Unfortunately, Tortorici’s story is not as exciting as his craft. A semi-autobiographical portrait of a closeted 19-year-old who reacts to his shame by being arrogant and isolated does not make for a particularly interesting movie. There are sequences like whenever the protagonist is dissociating through partying that are compelling to watch or, the opposite, when Tortorici is capturing the character’s loneliness. But the film gets too weighed down by the character’s interest in pre-20th century (especially 14th century) Italian literature including one sequence where we are literally just watching this boy study.
It’s true that some queer people hide that queerness by leaning into gender performance in a way that’s off-putting. I just need a movie to do more with that than force me to spend time around the behavior.
I’m looking forward to seeing what Tortorici does next. His talent is worthy of Guadagnino. He just needs more interesting stories to tell.
Tata (dir. Lina Vdovîi, Radu Ciorniciuc)
Throughout Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc’s personal and powerful documentary, Vdovîi’s father never changes. He listens — or tries to listen — as Vdovîi expresses how painful his abuse was on her and her sisters and their mother, but he returns to how much better he was than his own father. He returns to the teachings of his church and the teachings of his culture. He returns to the teachings of patriarchy.
The film is split between Vdovîi’s quest to excavate her personal history alongside her partner Ciorniciuc as they prepare to have their first child, and Vdovîi’s attempt to save her complicated father from abusive work conditions in Italy. Vdovîi equips him with hidden cameras and hidden microphones, uses her connections as a journalist to find him legal counsel, and tries to help him as a way of forgiveness.
These two parts are not disparate, but rather create a portrait of the intrinsic nature of the violence in our world. Vdovîi’s father blames his aggression on his desire to survive. He provided for his family — is that not enough? He can’t understand Vdovîi’s plea for other means of support. It’s not just about food on the table. It’s also about expressions of love, kindness, and no violence rather than just less.
While this is not an easy film to watch, there is a real sense of hope in Vdovîi and Ciorniciuc’s desire to create a different kind of home for their own child. Maybe all we can do is improve things little by little with each generation until someone has the upbringing we all deserve.
Rez Ball (dir. Sydney Freeland)
Full review.
On Swift Horses (dir. Daniel Minahan)
Full review.
Nightbitch (dir. Marielle Heller)
Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch has been pitched as a comedy for women and a horror movie for men. It would be more accurate to say it’s a horror movie for upper middle class straight white moms and a comedy for their husbands.
Amy Adams plays a woman who has given up her life as an artist to be a stay-at-home mom while her husband goes off on business trips. She is billed only as Mother, her husband as Husband, and her Son as son. This appears to be an attempt at universality that — along with exhausting monologues about Womanhood and Motherhood — does more to reveal the limits of writer/director Marielle Heller’s perspective.
This is a film desperately in need of self-awareness. Amy Adams does her best to make Mother into a complex character struggling with depression. But the movie is desperate to make her experience indicative of Our Society rather than a combination of, yes, patriarchy and class expectations, but also her specific marriage and her personal choices.
She is a self-pitying character who judges everyone around her. While throughout the film she’ll learn to be kinder to the other suburban moms, the film does not suggest the same is deserved of her “diverse city friends.” In the worldview of Nightbitch, women are powerful and animalistic because they have periods and give birth, men are clueless and incompetent because they don’t, and women who work are either rich enough to afford full-time help or too soulless to embark on the essential journey of raising a child.
There absolutely are expectations placed on upper middle class white straight women that are not placed on their husbands. I’m sure the experience of raising a child with those expectations is challenging. But this movie doesn’t seem to understand the nuance of these expectations opting instead for a belief that All Women are like this Amy Adams character.
The complete failure of this movie’s themes wouldn’t matter as much if it worked as a film. Unfortunately, its body horror aspects are never pushed toward anything of interest. It feels like Heller is so afraid of losing her primary audience (self-important suburban moms) that she has muzzled anything that might have been effective.
An ideal work of mainstream feminist cinema should operate on multiple levels. It can appeal to women with the utmost privilege and simplest understanding of feminism while also including some semblance of depth. (Like Barbie!) There is not depth here. Just a portrait of a woman desperate to be interesting and blaming her boredom on everyone but herself.
Amy Adams in Nightbitch
U Are the Universe (dir. Pavlo Ostrikov)
Much will be made of this movie having been written and filmed during Russia’s ongoing violence against Ukraine. But what makes this small-scale sci-fi drama so effective is that the circumstances of its filming go beyond being impressive. Rather, the grief and loss and fight is felt from beginning to end.
Volodymyr Kravchuk plays Andriy, a Ukrainian “trucker” in the middle of a four year mission when the Earth explodes. He believes he is the last living human in the universe until he’s contacted by a French meteorologist in Saturn’s orbit. They begin a correspondence and he decides he’s willing to risk his life to take the long journey to meet her.
With his isolation, personal robot assistance, and long-distance vocal romance, the film has elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon, The Martian, and Her, to name a few. But what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in execution. The circumstances of its filming, as well as Pavlo Ostrikov’s skill as a filmmaker, result in a film that is sentimental yet never saccharine. It’s a powerful portrait of survival and beyond.
Really Happy Someday (dir. J Stevens)
Emilia Pérez (dir. Jacques Audiard)
Rumours (dir. Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, Evan Johnson)
If Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, and Evan Johnson’s Rumours doesn’t feel particularly hard-hitting as satire, it’s easy to forgive. Is it not enough for a comedy to be funny while punching up at some of our world’s easiest targets?
The movie is very funny, largely due to its collection of committed performances. Cate Blanchett is great as always, but it’s Sylvain Broulez as the French Prime Minister and Charles Dance as the American president (who inexplicably has a British accent) who provide the film’s funniest moments. As a sort of Veep meets This Is the End as filtered through Guy Maddin’s idiosyncratic visual sense and Canadianess, Rumours is an entertaining watch. It may not say anything revelatory about the people who run our world, but maybe mocking them is enough. At the very least, it’s cathartic.
Else (dir. Thibault Emin)
The initial hook of Else seems to be: What if you spent the pandemic with Amèlie? Anx (Matthieu Sampeur) is an awkward sad boy who meets Cass (Édith Proust ) at a party and has what he believes to be a one night stand. But Cass, whose joie de vivre crosses into the chaotic, doesn’t disappear after the one night. Her tornado of a personality returns to Anx and they end up trapped together as the world sinks into an unsettling pandemic.
The greatest strength of this film is its body horror. While the characters’ confusion around the disease recalls Covid, the illness itself is more absurd. People are melding with the objects around them. This leads to some horrifying images and sequences of people (and animals) combined with rocks and furniture and a bed sheet.
Unfortunately, the characters are not nearly as compelling as the ideas and images. Even if it devolves into horror and then abstraction, the film would work better if the central relationship went beyond its played out tropes. That said, there’s enough in this debut feature to have me interested in what Thibault Emin does next.
My Sunshine (dir. Hiroshi Okuyama)
What begins as a sort of Billy Elliot on ice unravels into a less inspirational and more melancholy tale of soft masculinity in a harsh world.
Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama) isn’t good at baseball in the spring and summer and he isn’t good at hockey in the fall and winter. But he’s entranced by figure skating — or, at least, he’s entranced by figure skater, Sakura (Kiara Nakanishi). His interest (in skating, not the girl) attracts the attention of gay figure skating teacher Arakawa (Sōsuke Ikematsu) who sees this rare boy willing to skate as a potential ice dance partner for Sakura. The three form a chosen family, bonding over skating and a rare warmth amid the ice.
With gorgeous gauzy images, the film is excellent in its quieter moments — especially whenever they’re skating. Some of the dramatic turns feel a bit forced, unworthy of the surrounding subtlety, but it’s still an accomplished work about alternate forms of masculinity.
Kiara Nakanishi and Keitatsu Koshiyama in My Sunshine
Sweet Angel Baby (dir. Melanie Oates)
Linda (dir. Mariana Wainstein)
Friendship (dir. Andrew DeYoung)
Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd are at their most Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship. At times this is a positive, Robinson’s brash social awkwardness playing against Rudd’s aw shucks charm. At other times, it feels like the movie is missing a little something more.
I think this cringe comedy touches upon interesting ideas around masculinity and boundaries. But it struggles to sustain its uncanny tone. When it’s funny, it’s really funny. When it’s thought-provoking, it’s really thought-provoking. But for me the gaps in between were too long and by the end I just wanted to get away from both of these men.
The Shrouds (dir. David Cronenberg)
With every passing moment of the often enthralling, occasionally tedious new film from David Cronenberg, it becomes more confounding, more perverted, and, ultimately, more accomplished. At first, it feels like a mature work of an older filmmaker. It’s talky and deliberately paced — still concerned with usual Cronenberg themes of technology and the body and with the usual Cronenberg dark humor, but heavy with the weight of grief.
If the movie had continued with this tone, it would have been easier to like. Thank God, it gets bonkers instead. In all its imperfections, The Shrouds is a challenging work, yes, about grief, but also about love and partnership and fucked up sex and the impossible to comprehend state of geopolitical capitalism and environmental catastrophe. As it becomes less and less logical, it began to feel like Cronenberg’s take on The Long Goodbye. He’s traded out the LA stoner vibe copied by other descendants, opting instead for a grotesquely upper class Toronto, but it has the same nonsense to its mystery. The truth doesn’t matter, because in our world truth may not even exist.
It’s thrilling that Cronenberg this late in his career is still able to make work this difficult and original. In a movie filled with dogs — including the worst trained seeing eye dog I’ve ever seen on-screen that is either a product of Cronenberg’s casual ableism or a deliberate galaxy brain joke — Cronenberg himself is an old dog with plenty of new tricks.
Babygirl (dir. Halina Reijn)
Queer (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Happy Holidays (dir. Scandar Copti)
Toward the beginning of the third part of Scandar Copti’s interconnected family drama, an IDF solider asks a room of Israeli students for their fears. One boy raises his hand and says, “That we might be on the wrong side.” The soldier waves him off, “No, no, bigger than that.” She doesn’t chastise, she doesn’t argue, she just diminishes.
Throughout its sections, Copti’s film shows the varied experiences of people living in an apartheid state. As the characters go about their lives, the bigotry and indoctrination built into their society eats away at those who are persecuted and those who are doing the persecuting.
With a stellar cast led by Manar Shehab and Toufic Danial and sharp writing, the characters are gifted the complexity of flaws. Their problems go beyond the Israeli occupation of Palestine and yet it hangs over every moment. Sometimes it’s quite explicit — two characters struggle with an unplanned pregnancy given that one of them is Jewish and the other Arab — and other times it exists in the background — like the daily indoctrination another character must witness teaching at an elementary school. All of the characters are impacted by their societal structure — both the political landscape of Israel and the broader weight of patriarchy.
The film slowly unravels its secrets until each mystery lands with a devastating thud. These characters are not granted relief in revelation, but merely another day to keep seeking connection, joy, and survival.
Hold Your Breath (dir. Karrie Crouse, Will Joines)
If you liked Run (2020), but wished it was set in 1930s Oklahoma you’re in luck. Scary mommy Sarah Paulson is back and she’s in the dust bowl!
Paulson plays Margaret Bellum, a mother trying desperately to keep her daughters safe from dust storms, intruders, and herself while her husband is away. Ever since her third daughter died, Margaret has been sleepwalking with a disconnect from reality. A combination of pills and keeping the doors locked and the house clean has kept her afloat, but when her eldest reads the story of the Grey Man who turns to dust and seeps through the walls, Margaret begins to crack.
There is a lot to mine in the fact that sometimes the most dangerous threat to children is a parent trying to keep them safe. When the film leans into Margaret’s desperate desire for control amid the dust, it’s a scary and upsetting film. I wish Hold Your Breath was as clear in what it wanted to accomplish with a character introduced halfway through played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach. While his performance is as good as expected, he feels out of place in the narrative. Despite this subplot and a dour tone, Sarah Paulson makes the film worth checking out. She is doing exactly what she does best.
No Other Land (dir. Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor)
There’s a naïve part of me that believes all it would take is to watch this documentary. That it would be impossible to ignore this footage of Palestinians surviving and resisting in the West Bank as the Israeli military and settlers demolish their homes (and schools and playgrounds and bodies). That it would be obvious who is building and who is destroying. That no one could still say “Israel is defending itself” or “it’s complicated.” The ethical, human demand for a free Palestine would suddenly be clear.
If there’s a documentary that could have this impact, it might be this one. Made in collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, the film primarily focuses on co-director Basel Adra whose tool of resistance has long been his camera. Carrying on decades of activist work alongside his father, Basel records, not allowing the Israelis to commit atrocities in hiding. He develops a friendship with an Israeli journalist, co-director Yuval Abraham, who denounces his country and wants to help Basel and his community. Far from an easy, inspirational tale of people on opposite sides joining hands, Yuval’s presence in the West Bank remains complicated. Many don’t trust him and even Basel repeatedly points out that Yuval will always be a visitor, free to come and go while Basel cannot.
There’s a naïve part of me that believes all it would take is for people to watch this film. But there’s a wiser part of me that understands, as Basel points out to Yuval, that this struggle has been going on for decades and while resistance is not be quick, it is still essential. Basel is risking his life to record this footage and alongside his collaborators has created a sharp, complex, and, at times, even joyful portrait of survival. The film was finished in October 2023. The violence has only gotten worse since. The least we can do is bear witness.
Basel Adra in No Other Land
Will and Harper (dir. Josh Greenbaum)
Sad Jokes (dir. Fabian Stumm)
Dahomey (dir. Mati Diop)
For the first part of Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey, only the statues are given humanity. Shallow focus makes their handlers blurred, the masks they wear in 2021 hiding their faces further. Even if Diop didn’t have them literally speak, the statues would have a voice.
The film is about 26 artifacts returned to Benin by France in 2021, previously taken amid colonial violence. Once the statues arrive, the doc becomes split — still centering the statues, but also allowing space for the various opinions of people in Benin. Some celebrate it as a triumph, others ask why only 26 items have returned when France has hundreds. The combination of styles and perspectives join to create a sharp and moving portrait of the long-lasting impact of colonialism and the difficulty of repair.
From Ground Zero (dir. Wissam Moussa, Nidal Damo, Alaa Ayoub, Karim Satoum, Bashar Al Babisi, Khamis Masharawi, Neda’a Abu Hassnah, Tamer Nijim, Ahmed Al Danaf, Rima Mahmoud, Muhammad Al Sharif, Basil El Maqousi, Mustafa Al Nabih, Rabab Khamis, Mustafa Kulab, Alaa Damo, Hana Eleiwa, Mahdi Kreirah, Aws Al Banna, Islam Al Zeriei, Etimad Washah, Ahmad Hassunah)
I wish we could see the films they would make in freedom. I wish the filmmakers in Gaza who contributed the 22 short films to this omnibus collection of work could create in different circumstances. I wish their art didn’t have to feel like such a plea to the rest of the world to see their humanity.
It’s remarkable what these filmmakers have accomplished within these circumstances. The films are varied and artful, creative and bold. They are difficult to watch, but it feels like a bare minimum when, in fact, they are being lived. There is so much grief, so much destruction, so much suffering. I have nothing smart to say. I just hope the violence ends soon — not just the increase in violence since October but the violence perpetrated against Palestinians since 1948. I hope everyone can return to their homes and receive the resources to rebuild. I hope these artists are granted the opportunity to create in freedom. Those are the films I’d really like to watch.
Bird (dir. Andrea Arnold)
Daughter’s Daughter (dir. Huang Xi)
Without Blood (dir. Angelina Jolie)
Angelina Jolie’s latest directorial work had the potential to combine the glamor and interpersonal drama of her most accomplished, By the Sea, with the deeper concerns about war and violence found in her other films. Unfortunately, her visual talents and ability to get excellent performances from leads Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir are not matched by a screenplay that is blunt, repetitive, and structurally misguided.
After a violent prologue, most of the film finds these two characters sitting at a restaurant and talking. Rather than committing to a chamber drama where the two characters talk around their conflict with heightening tension, Jolie has Bichir’s character simply recount what has occurred in decades past. More than a framing device, we only see this past in quick visual flashbacks. It results in a movie that feels more like reading a Wikipedia synopsis alongside a slideshow.
It’s frustrating, because the themes Jolie is exploring are both interesting and important and the story she’s telling is, in theory, quite thrilling. The narrative had the potential for an epic tale of revenge and the misguided ways people justify their violence against other human beings. Instead, these themes are there, yet told in the dullest way possible. Since we’ve already witnessed the prologue, there’s no doubt about what occurred. There’s no mystery and little tension and no substance to the flashes of scenes we see. The film either needed to embrace a more conventional revenge tale structure or commit to being a two-hander with less direct and more intriguing dialogue.
Angelina Jolie is one of our greatest actors, greatest movie stars, and greatest celebrity humanitarians. Thus far her directorial work has not quite matched her other talents. But the potential is there and someday I think she will make a great film. Without Blood is not that film.
Love in the Big City (dir. E.oni)
Maybe every country needs its own Love, Simon. Maybe it’s not fair to judge this film when the only other queer Korean films I’ve seen are more art house while this is meant to be a mainstream crowd-pleaser. This wasn’t made for a 30-year-old American transsexual who has been out for three quarters of a decade. That’s okay. Still, I wish it had found a bit more balance in its run toward assimilation.
The movie stars Steve Sang-Hyun Noh as Heung-soo and Kim Go-eun as Jae-he, a closeted gay guy and his wild straight best girl friend, following them from ages 20 to 33. Heung-soo doesn’t believe in love while Jae-he is so eager for romance she gets labeled a slut. Bonded by their status as outsiders, the two friends become life partners of sorts through their 20s — through Heung-soo’s struggles with his sexuality and Jae-he’s struggles with her increasingly worse boyfriends.
The best part of the movie are the lead performances. They have great chemistry and sell even the film’s more melodramatic and saccharine moments. But as the movie continued, I grew tired of how the film seemed to let down Heung-soo’s half of the story. In a movie that ends with a musical number at a wedding, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want Heung-soo to find his own cheesy happy ending. And, no, a post-credit scene where he agrees to go on a date with a cop does not count.
Up Next: Harvest, Oh Canada
I couldn’t log in for a few days but I’m finally here to say i have been LOVING all the TIFF work! I look forward to your film festival work every time.
Also love the pan of Nightbitch, a book I was really quite bored by while everyone else was calling it “original” and “subversive”.
(I really appreciate how you review non-queer films as well! You’re so right that theres value in that, plus you’re great at it!)
every single morning, i have my little coffee and catch up on the tiff queer and trans recap
weird bc same
Everything you’ve said about Nightbitch makes me want to watch it more… if self-awareness is what you have, count me OUT.