TIFF18 REVIEW: Hjertelandet [Heartbound] [2018]

I can sell my body if it helps my family. A film ten years in the making, anthropologist Sine Plambech and her director husband Janus Metz‘s open a door with Hjertelandet [Heartbound] onto an intriguing humanist story dealing with the complexities of life, love, and survival that spans almost nine thousand kilometers from Thailand to Denmark. The logline is simple: over 900 Thai women have moved to Jutland in order to marry Danes and carve out a better life than is available back home. The motivations for this decision, however,…

Read More

TIFF18 REVIEW: The Third Wife [2018]

One day you’ll like it for real. It’s 19th century Vietnam and fourteen-year old May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My) has just been married to a wealthy landowner named Hung (Long Le Vu). She wears a genuine smile on her face, this next chapter in life as hopeful as it is scary. She has two other women to help steer her through womanhood, motherhood, and sexual pleasure (Nu Yên-Khê Tran‘s first wife Ha and Mai Thu Huong Maya‘s second wife Xuan) and a future of comfort awaiting her with but one…

Read More