Continuing in the vein of Justice, Maria Ramos’s examination of the Brazilian justice system, Behave is an equally potent and sobering social inquiry into the state’s juvenile re-socialization program. Working within the limitations of protecting the identity of the young offenders’ identities, the film is predominantly shot facing Judge Luciana Fiala, a conscientious juvenile court […]
In the subtly insightful opening sequence of the film, a disabled parking attendant is brought before a judge in a Rio de Janeiro criminal courtroom for a preliminary hearing stemming from a police arrest on a burglary charge. The defendant begins to provide an explanation for the circumstances of how he came to be at […]
Marc Recha channels the spirit of Lisandro Alonso’s primitivistic, metaphoric journey of interiority in Los Muertos (a derivation made all the more transparent by an extended river exploration sequence) to a visually sublime, but soporific and tediously unoriginal effect in Days of August. Ostensibly a personal chronicle of a writer, Marc (Marc Recha) who embarks […]
During the Q&A for the film, filmmaker David Redmon explained that the initial concept for Mardi Gras: Made in China revolved around the idea of exploring the interconnection between pop culture, ritual, and globalization. To this end, the idea of tracing the origin of a disposable commodity – Mardi Gras beads – seemed ideally suited […]
In one of several, equally heart-rending and inspiring segments in Videoletters entitled Vlada and Ivica, Vlada and his father Zoran, a Serbian, finishes recording his videotaped message and begins to reflect pensively on their family’s inevitable estrangement from the intended videoletter recipient, Vlada’s childhood friend Ivica and his father Zeljko Krilcici, a colleague and long-time […]
From a seemingly innocuous encounter between a gregarious musician who goes by the stage name Piranha and an impassive and unambitious cab driver, Alejandro, whom he recognizes (perhaps mistakenly) as his brother’s childhood friend, Martín Rejtman creates an effervescent comedy of errors as the well-intentioned Piranha and his equally enthusiastic wife attempt to reunite Alejandro […]