An early establishing sequence in Moolaadé captures the intrinsic character of the unnamed rural village through its peculiar, indigenous architecture, as the camera lingers on the voluptuous image of the local mosque that has been fashioned in the tactile and simple organic forms of a traditional African mudhut and curiously topped with an ostrich egg. […]
From the opening image of the first witness called to testify in Bamako, the village griot – a tribal ancient and tale teller who passes on his culture’s collective history from generation to generation through the orality of ancient chants – who, paradoxically, is unable to communicate his testimony (and, in broader implication, the testimony […]
Recalling Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Love and Patrice Laconte’s Monsieur Hire in its dark, brooding tale of voyeurism, unrequited obsession, and ache of desire, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Four Nights with Anna may be seen as a modern day evolution of the cinema of moral concern, where the traumas (and transgressions) of history are intertwined […]
Near the halfway mark of the first week at the festival, Bohdan Slama’s exquisitely rendered Something Like Happiness provides a good-natured, refreshing, leisurely paced, and satisfying palate cleanser: a slice-of-life serio-comedy on devotion, friendship, family, and missed connection. At the heart of the film is the scruffy bohemian, a perennial “sweet guy” named Tonik (Pavel […]
The title of the film provides a glimpse into the fragility of the hollow, empty life led by the main character: a middle-aged airbrush operator at an Ohio doll factory named Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) who takes cares for her invalid father, shuttles her car-less, twentysomething best friend and fellow factory worker Kyle (Dustin James Ashley) […]
One of my favorite films from this year’s festival is Aleksandr Sokurov’s Alexandra, a spare, poetic, and understatedly affirming elegy on the spiritual and moral consequences of a corrosive, interminable war. At the heart and soul of the film is the stubborn and indomitable babushka, Alexandra, played by the famed Russian soprano and sprightly octogenarian […]