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Lolo
(Trailer is in French with no subtitles)
I knew it was a matter of time before Julie Delpy would make her own feature film. The French actress who came to fame as a muse of Krzyzstof Kieslowski in the Three Colours trilogy, has gone on to claim a solid English-language career, most notably in her collaborations with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke in the Before series of films, which she also co-wrote. She has been writing for a long time. So here we are with her first feature and that's exciting. The trailer worries me a little but the (uncredited) TIFF programme notes reassure me that she is aiming for farce. And I am willing to believe in this gifted artist.
Gala
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London Road
The entire original National Theatre cast is in this film adaptation by Rufus Norris of the musical starring Tom Hardy and Olivia Coleman as two of the residents of the street made famous by the "Suffolk Strangler" murders of 2006. The musical uses the actual words of the residents found in media interviews as they struggled to adjust to the horror and the presence of media. But rather than sensationalizing it, it uses their witness to show how they managed to regroup and recreate themselves as a community. A very sought-after ticket and an interesting alternative vision to the Hollywood glamourized trauma stories that are otherwise on top show this year.
City to City: London
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Looking for Grace
I'm not generally one for films that are "understated drama turned to crime comedy" but I am drawn here to the premise of a narrative unfolding from changing points of view. It is about a young woman making a long bus trip with a best friend, who encounters a young man on the way when things become complex and even dangerous. I have no experience of the work of Australian Sue Brooks but her appearance in the Platform programme points to someone with conspicuous talent. No trailer.
Platform
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Mia Madre (My Mother) √
Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre, stars Margherita Buy as a filmmaker trying to make a new feature film while also attending to the deathbed of her mother. John Turturro plays a challenging American star and Moretti a sympathetic family figure connected to the mother. These are the details, but what is most important here is Moretti's incredible gift for understanding how that which gives us life can also be a cause of sadness. I've followed his work ever since the Motorcycle Diaries and have never been disappointed.
Special Presentations
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Miss Sharon Jones! √
Oh my goodness! Someone has made a movie about Sharon Jones whom I absolutely adore (playing with her band known as the Dap Kings)! And then, oh my goodness! It's legendary documentary filmmaker, Barbara Kopple, who made Harlan County, USA (playing in the Cinematheque part of the festival this year) and Dixie Chicks, Shut Up and Sing!! Oh no!, I had no idea that Jones had a cancer scare that nearly ended her performing career. What?! No trailer? Well, who needs one? Go!!! But don't get ahead of me in the line!Tiff Docs
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Mountain √
In the first blog, I mentioned that there were a number of very interesting Palestinian and Israeli films at TIFF this year. Alphabetically, the Palestinian came first. But here is the first of the Israeli. Yaelle Kayam's debut feature is set on the Mount of Olives and follows a young Orthodox mother who lives in the only dwelling inside the famous cemetery. As circumstances draw her family further from her, she becomes drawn into the night world of the cemetery, finding comfort and an emerging identity. I am always interested in movies that look at the isolation that is sometimes the experience of orthodox religious women of faith. No trailer.Discovery
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Much Loved
Nabil Ayouch reviewed the testimonies of 200 sex trade workers in Marrakesh in preparation for his movie about four women who form their own family as a means of coping with the violence, bribery, crime and general immorality that surround them in the night club world in which they work. The movie participates in the Contemporary World Speakers programme which looks to pair films with speakers, to talk about issues the movie raises. The speaker in this case is Ron Levi from the Munk School of Global Affairs whose specialty is "how we respond to crime and violence in a global context." What's that you say? Why couldn't they find a woman speaker for this film? Hmm.... these speakers seem to be almost always men and always from the Munk School of Global Affairs, whom I suspect helps to subsidize it. This year there is one woman in six speakers. Never mind. Go see the movie and maybe the discussion afterward will be stimulating. No trailer.
Contemporary World Cinema/Contemporary World Speakers
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Murmur of the Hearts √
As I move through the press releases every summer, hana my dog has learned to expect sudden sounds and open commentary. "Sylvia Chang has a feature!!!" was one such moment this summer and there aren't enough exclamation marks. In a year that marks a number of filmmakers offering works after long absences (see Patricia Rozema), this film tells the story of adult siblings long-estranged who are preoccupied by the same childhood memories of their mother and her mystical tales of a magical mermaid who lived off the coast of the island they lived on. I remember first being interested in Chang when she was an actress in The Red Violin and I still remember the last film she brought as a director in 1999, which she also starred in, Tempting Heart. A high seed.
Contemporary World Cinema
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The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble
Yo-Yo Ma formed The Silk Road Ensemble in the early 2000s to help find a way to focus his fame into something constructive for himself that would also fulfill a deeper purpose in the world. The result is a collective of musicians from many cultures and traditions who play together on a wide variety of instruments that you may not have ever seen before.
Morgan Neville, fresh from his Oscar for 2013's Twenty Feet from Stardom, and also showing Keith Richards: Under the Influence at this festival, directs. No trailer.
Tiff Docs
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My Internship in Canada
Refreshing: a Québecois filmmaker who made a US film but prefers to come home and stay in Québec! Bien vous savez quoi?! After last year's moving and funny The Good Lie, which looked at Kenyan immigrants coming to America, the director of Monsieur Lazhar has fashioned a story about a Québecois MP who finds himself in the position of deciding whether the country goes to war. Assisted by his Haitian intern, who seems to know Canada's constitution better than he does, and lobbied by all sides, including within his own family (that includes the amazing Suzanne Clément), this comedy-drama couldn't be better timed in a federal election year.
Contemporary World Cinema
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No Home Movie √
I found this clip very compelling and moving. Legendary feminist filmmaker Chantal Akerman, whose first film screened at the very first Festival of Festivals, has traced the themes of her movies back to her mother, in this affectionate but uncompromising profile. A feminist herself, a survivor of Auschwitz, Akerman's mother emerges before the camera, and Akerman uses the film as an opportunity to hear her finally tell the darker parts of her story. Not to be missed.
Wavelengths
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One Breath
Contemporary World Cinema/Contemporary World Speakers
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Our Last Tango
I am trying to overcome my disappointment that Carlos Saura's latest film (which has been in the European festivals) didn't come to TIFF, so maybe I will find more than consolation in this film which looks like it may owe something to Saura. German Kral is Argentinian but has worked as an Assistant Director to Wim Wenders but has also made his own movies for many years. The film follows Argentina's premier tango duo, as they tell the stories of their careers and their relationship and perform throughout. This trailer shows an opening that takes its cue from Singing in the Rain. Tiff Docs
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Master Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda's more recent films have focused on what it means to be family (I Wish; Like Father Like Son) and have been among his best works. This story of a death that reunites stepsisters looking to dissolve the tensions and boundaries imposed on them by other family members, appears like it will continue another of Kore-eda's themes: children as resourceful arbiters of peace and wellbeing. A director who never disappoints, a strong favourite at Cannes and my own personal second highest priority of the fest. Masters
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Parched
A number of things interest me about Indian Leena Yadav's feature which follows a widowed woman in India as she fulfills a community and cultural expectation to find a child bride for her fifteen-year old son. The sense of this woman's growing dissatisfaction with cultural values and how her friendships with women stir her into critique feels like it may offer not only an important perspective but an interesting new South Asian filmmaking voice. Apparently gorgeously shot by Russell Carpenter (Titanic.) No trailer.
Special Presentations
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The Pearl Button
I hesitated to include this one because the last film of renowned Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman, Nostalgia for the Light, I walked out of. The visual life of his films is always gorgeous and moving but I become oppressed by the relentless voiceover narration. However, several trailers this year have convinced me that Terrence Malick's more suggestive, poetic and philosophic use of voiceover has been influential and it seems possible here to. I am very interested in Patagonia and the work of this notable master always deserves a second look.
Masters
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P.S. Jerusalem
Danae Elon is an Israeli who was living in New York when she decided to move back home to Jerusalem with her family. Born to activist parents who were/are critics of Israel she felt a strong call to understand for herself what was true. This documentary, shot over three years, chronicles the family's attempts to integrate not only their ex-patriate selves but the cultural attitudes they were holding as they make a new life in an old familiar place. As programmer Thom Powers notes, "P.S. Jerusalem is a film about navigating the divisions between the individual and the family, the past and the present, and hope and reality. There are no easy answers." Another in a series of interesting views on Israel/Palestine by women filmmakers.
Tiff Docs
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Paths of the Soul √
Regular attenders of the festival and/or Asian film fans may remember Zhang Yang's beautiful feature Shower from 1999, or even the more recent Full Circle. His thoughtful meditative use of the wide frame and extended shots seems likely to suit this chronicle of Tibetan villagers making a "bowing pilgrimage" to Lhasa, the spiritual center of Tibetan Buddhism. The bowing refers to the practice of stopping every few feet to lay themselves prostrate. Part documentary and part fiction, it considers the reasons why people make such pilgrimages, each individual responding to a deep inner need for healing, cleansing change or preparation for another life. A top ten seed for me. No trailer.
Contemporary World Cinema
He Ping is a filmmaker whose work I've always had an interest in but somehow never seen. So I am determined to view this latest work which looks at Chinese youth torn between family obligation in small villages and new life in the big cities. This is a case where the trailer has affected me strongly too -- I love the split frame (not split screen) and wider compositional shots that remind me a lot of Kieslowski. Hoping to make a great find here.
Platform
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Rabin: The Last Day
I have been following the work of Israeli-American filmmaker Amos Gitaï at TIFF ever since I first found him in the 1999 festival with his brilliantly moving film Kadosh, about the impact of orthodox customs on a childless young couple very much in love. I have since seen everything he has done that has appeared at TIFF and for a while there, there was a new one every year. His 2010 movie Plus Tard Tu Comprendras starring Jeanne Moreau as a French woman who has hid her Jewish past all her life, affected me deeply. Gitai's movies are always a blend of fiction and documentary and this year's offering, which looks at the events of the day that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assissinated, promises to be equally impactful.
Masters
More to come! Stay tuned for the last blog with the final twenty titles, in the next couple of days.
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