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45 Years √
Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling won the Best Actor and Actress award at the Berlinale this year for their roles as a couple who face a challenging discovery on the eve of their 45th wedding anniversary, in Andrew Haigh's already highly acclaimed drama. The film opens in the UK and was available on demand from August 28th, as the trailer link tells us, but TIFF will have the official North American premiere.
3000 Nights
This is a very strong year for films from Palestine and Israel. Many of these movies are not only made by women but they have been programmed by women, TIFF programmers Rasha Salti and Jane Schoettle respectively. One of them is this Mai Masri feature about a Palestinian woman who discovers she is pregnant after having been wrongfully imprisoned in Israel. The birth galvanizes the other prisoners into a capacity for action they might not have had otherwise.
Contemporary World Cinema
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About Ray
Gaby Dellal directs Elle Fanning, Susan Sarandon and Naomi Watts in this story of a New York teen whose journey toward gender reassignment causes new reckonings in lost family relationships. I'm hoping the writing is better than what I see in the trailer but the word is out that there are strong performances. A front runner in The Weinstein Company's fall slate.
Special Presentations
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AfternoonTsai Ming-Liang's work of the last five years has been a source of fascination and wonder to me. Last year's Journey to the West was completely hypnotic. In Afternoon, Tsai focuses a conversation between himself and his constant collaborator actor Lee Keng-shang who holds the deepest inspiration for his art. No trailer but slavish devotees will not need one.
Wavelengths
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Al Purdy Was Here
What draws me most to critic Brian D. Johnson's first feature documentary about the renowned Canadian poet is its promise of "readings and reminiscences from friends and colleagues" and performances by Canadian music legends like Bruce Cockburn and Sarah Harmer. The trailer lives into the promise and makes me feel a kind of nostalgia for all things Canadian that is hard to describe.
Tiff Docs
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Amazing Grace √
A last wish of the late Hollywood director and producer Sydney Pollack was that footage he shot behind-the-scenes at the 1972 recording of Aretha Franklin's first album Amazing Grace (which would go on to become the best selling gospel record of all time) might finally become a film. Producer Alan Elliott has now accomplished that dream. Not only is this screening a fantastic opportunity to see very rare footage, but as the trailer demonstrates, it comes with Pollack's frequent appearance on camera, and thus a chance to remember him as well. There is some legal uncertainty around whether TIFF will be able to screen this as planned, but all going well this is a very exciting entry in the prolific Tiff Docs line-up that is on offer this year.
Tiff Docs
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An √
This lighter drama from Japanese auteur Naomi Kawase focuses on an old woman whose magical recipe for a red-bean paste filled treat changes the life of a vendor and his daughter. Kawase excels at the nuances of relationship, and particularly the growing intimacy of strangers who need each other. I have wanted to see this since first seeing the trailer for Cannes and someone I know who saw it there said it was among his best films of the fest. A personal top seed.
Contemporary World Cinema.
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The Apostate
My interest in films about religion and spirituality, and in broader terms "faith" can also include stories about people who renounce same. Uruguayan filmmaker Federico Veiroj moves to Spain and collaborates with actor/writer Alvara Ogalla to tell the story of a Madrid man who seeks to officially renounce his faith only to run afoul of church bureaucracy and his own family in doing so. Critics buzz points to a stronger movie than this trailer might lead you to think and I'm banking on that.
Contemporary World Cinema
Contemporary World Cinema
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Arabian Nights: The Restless One
Portuguese master Miguel Gomes' magnum trilogy garnered much attention at Cannes. Gomes uses the famous tales by Scheherazade as a point of inspiration in commenting on contemporary Portuguese culture and politics. And I'm sure that description doesn't begin to do it justice. Don't rely on this -- read Andréa Picard's effusive notes, which managed to compel me. Also showing, Arabian Nights: The Desolate One and Arabian Nights: The Enchanted One.
Wavelengths
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The Assassin √
The great Taiwanese master filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien has been receiving outstanding reviews for this story of a ninth century nun who abducts a general's daughter and schools her in martial arts (yes you read that right). The available clips and the trailer show Hou's signature lush visual style and rich use of depth, with something going on in all parts of the frame. He won the Cannes Best Director prize for it.
Masters
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Bienvenue à F.L.
Another promising feature from the robust Tiff Docs line-up is Geneviève Dulude-De Celles' profile of students in her old high school in Sorel-Tracy, Québec. Using their own words about their lives against a poetically observed visual portrait of the school, the problems of teenaged life the world over get observed in a fresh way, while staying intractably located in its world.
Tiff Docs
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Body √
(Trailer is in Polish - no English subs)
I was very moved by Malgorzata Szumowska's last feature Elles, which screened in TIFF11 and which I reviewed then (see here). Szumowska won the Best Director prize at the Berlinale for this fourth feature, about a young woman who struggles with an eating disorder and whose coroner father is oblivous. No English-subbed trailer but the visuals for the Polish trailer are very promising.
Special Presentations
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Bolshoi BabylonThere is no trailer available for this Tiff Docs entry by UK filmmaker Nick Read, but the programme notes promise an intense journey chronicling the aftermath of an attack on the director of the famed ballet company in 2013, and its deep impact on the ensemble and their work. With lush performance sequences and reputedly gorgeous cinematography.
Tiff Docs
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Brooklyn
Irish filmmaker John Crowley's latest tells the tale of a young woman who travels to America to make a better life for herself in the 1950s, only to be called back again after a family crisis. Her heart now in two places, she struggles to figure out what is home. I like the visual tone of the trailer. Starring Atonement actress Saoirse Ronan, with Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters.
Special Presentations
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Campo GrandeA woman in the posh Ipanema district of Rio De Jeneiro opens her door one morning to find two children abandoned there. Sandra Kogut's second feature tells the story of what happens next from the point of view of the elder child, a boy. A second feature from the director of the much-acclaimed Mutum. As in that film Campo Grande looks at the impact of Brazil's economy on the lives of children. No trailer.
Contemporary World Cinema
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Cemetery of Splendour √
I confess that I have not always been able to easily access the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whom many believe to be one of the greatest living filmmakers. But this latest about a lonely housewife who adopts one of the soldiers in a clinic full of men who appear to be suffering from a rare sleeping sickness, moves me in the scenes I have seen from it. With Weerasethakul, you can always count on a stunning visual sensibility, characterized by painterly wide shots that frame the human experience so that your eye is drawn to the smallest detail and that detail is more meaningful than you ever might have thought.
Masters
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The Danish Girl √
[Updated!!: 9/2 The trailer dropped yesterday and is now here.]Tom Hooper, the director of The King's Speech and Les Misérables turns his lens on Lili, possibly the world's first person to experience gender reassignment. Based on the novel by David Ebershoff, which is in turn based on a true story, The Danish Girl is set in 1920s Copenhagen, where Eddie Redmayne as Einar and Alicia Vikander as Gerda are a married team of artists experiencing differing success. When Einar stands in for a female model one day, he finds himself able to express his deeper identity and a journey begins. The love story among the couple is the main focus, however, reminding me very much of Xavier Dolan's Laurence Anyways.
Special Presentations
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Dark Horse
Someone is going to make a dramatic feature film of this in the next ten seconds, if that project doesn't already exist. The small town mining communities of Wales have been cropping up in movies such as the 2014 picture Pride. This documentary by Louise Osmond chronicles such a small town and the extraordinary decision they made to breed a racing horse named Dream Alliance. Soon their world turned upside down as the tony culture of British horse racing reacted to the brash newcomer. A "member of the family", Dream's up and down fortunes galvanized the community that raised her and their devotion to her is the real story here.
Tiff Docs
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Dégradé
It is actually a scene more than a trailer, but it's what is available for this first feature film by Gaza brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser. The story follows a dozen Palestinian women and children in a salon in Gaza who are forced into captivity together when a violent dispute breaks out in the street outside that involves a lion on a leash. Nonetheless, the women do their best to continue their lives, preparing for a wedding and supporting each other in their problems, checking often to see if the siege is over. It's not hard to see the metaphors at work here but I'm curious to see this movie which was in the critics week at Cannes and stars the always-wonderful Hiam Abbass.
Discovery
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Dheepan
The first twenty films finishes alphabetically with the Palme D'Or winner at this year's Cannes fest. The newest film from Rust and Bone director Jacques Audiard focuses on the plight of migrants who are fleeing persecution in their home lands. In this case, a Tamil fighter convinces a single woman and orphan girl in his refugee camp to form a "family", which will increase the likelihood of their succeeding in being accepted as immigrants in the outskirts of Paris where they eventually come to live. A sharply observed and important kind of story to tell in a time when even as this blog is being published, Middle Eastern migrants are massing on the borders of Greece and Macedonia with the hope of getting to wealthy Europe. An acclaimed movie for our times.
Special Presentations
Part 2 with the next twenty films from D - L, and Part 3 with films 41 - 60 from L - R, and Part 4 with films 61-80 are now up too!
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