TIFF19 REVIEW: 1982 [2019]

Don’t invite the war into our home. Before 2007, all Lebanese men were conscripted to serve in the military for at least one year. I’ve heard from multiple people that it wasn’t a question of citizenship, but ethnicity. If I ever visited before that year, I wouldn’t have been able to return to America without fulfilling that obligation. Whether or not this was actually true—I’m not certain. But even if it wasn’t, all the children born there during a lengthy civil war against Syrian occupation and an eventual Israeli invasion…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: Knuckle City [2019]

I doubt your cries will reach Heaven. It’s 1994 and young Dudu and Duke have little in the way of inspiring role models to build lives for themselves in Mdantsane, South Africa. Apartheid is over and Nelson Mandela is president, but they’re taking notes from a father (Zolosa Xaluva‘s Art Nyakama) raving about how “real men” take care of their family despite cheating on his wife with teenagers and barely knowing what his sons are doing or where they are at any moment. What he means by “protection” is the…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: The Shadow of Violence [Calm with Horses] [2020]

That’s not you. To cross the Devers family is to earn retribution. This is a known fact to all in the rural Irish town of Glanbeigh. Some strangers arrive and overstep their bounds without knowing (as if getting involved with drug dealers was an act whose danger can be unknown), but most everyone knows everyone else’s name and where to find them. So when it’s Fannigan’s (Liam Carney) turn to “make good” on a transgression, he doesn’t try to run. He sits in his chair as Douglas “Arm” Armstrong (Cosmo…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: Hearts and Bones [2019]

How many times have you risked your life without asking me first? After witnessing famed Australian war photographer Daniel Fisher (Hugo Weaving) endure a traumatic experience in Iran during the opening of Ben Lawrence‘s Hearts and Bones, the sudden shift to a taxi driver (Andrew Luri‘s Sebastian Ahmed) will seem abrupt. It’s not, however, a coincidence that the latter recognizes the former’s name on the radio since they have a shared history courtesy of a small Sudanese village. Dan was on assignment during a massacre fifteen years ago that claimed…

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VENICE19 REVIEW: Les épouvantails [The Scarecrows] [2019]

You’re not lost. It begins in a prison cell with a despondent Djo (Joumene Limam) scribbling words on paper as Zina (Nour Hajri) implores her to stand so they may leave. Salvation comes in the form of a lawyer (Afef Ben Mahmoud‘s Nadia) and doctor (Fatma Ben Saïdane‘s Dora) desperate to figure out what has happened and how they were able to return to Tunisia. Details about this question only start to come into focus as Nouri Bouzid‘s Les épouvantails [The Scarecrows] progresses with the explanation that the two women…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: Disappearance at Clifton Hill [2020]

We grew up there. Every lie told takes us one step closer to burying the truth forever. While this often applies to current events like with Aesop’s fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” wherein a community is numbed to a boy’s warnings enough to let a tragedy occur under their noses, director Albert Shin and co-writer James Schultz reveal how it can also hold weight for the past and perhaps prove victim to the opposite effect. Because what happens when the truth comes before the lie? If a child tells…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: Héraðið [The County] [2019]

My tank was full. The devolution of a worker-owned entity into that which it was formed to combat probably occurs much faster than you’d expect. Things initially work like they should with successful profits and happy members. The establishment itself is also pleased because it sees little threat of anyone going outside its economic reach when the whole point of forming it was to get out from under the exorbitant costs of external resources. Vote an incoming director with greed in his/her heart that sees how good things are, however,…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit [Heimat is a Space in Time] [2019]

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. How much of our ancestry is tied to the history of the places we call home? While some of us would probably answer “None,” we’d be wrong. Just because your family tree was lucky enough to exist on the periphery of major historical moments as bystanders doesn’t mean you haven’t been impacted by wars, tragedies, inventions, and art in ways that defined your choices and subsequently the choices of your children. Why did my grandfather immigrate to America from Lebanon (then part…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: My English Cousin [2019]

I am cooked to perfection. It’s been seventeen years since Fahed Mameri left Algeria to achieve a better life in England. Since then he has settled in Grimsby (a place with high unemployment and little infrastructure to sustain a healthy living), married an Englishwoman, and found two jobs with which to earn barely enough money to pay the rent. Because his dream of prosperity hasn’t quite worked out, nostalgia for family and the more conservative lifestyle of their African nation instills a desire within to return. His mother is growing…

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REVIEW: Anima [2019]

Please let me know when you’ve had enough. When you’re Thom Yorke and well into a career with one of the most recognizable rock bands in the world (they self-release records on a “pay what you want” scale after all), you can think outside the box where advertising is concerned. So don’t be mistaken where his short film collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson is concerned. Anima is very much an advertisement for the album of the same name and Yorke himself as an artist about to tour. The same goes…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: III [2019]

No one said enough is enough. I’ve never been one to pay attention to lyrics. All I need is a good tune, complementary voice, and the joy their marriage instills. So I didn’t think twice when The Lumineers‘ latest single “Gloria” hit the radio. Its folk rock melody was as upbeat and fun as any of the other songs they’ve released like “Ho Hey” or “Ophelia.” Little did I know that the words Wesley Schultz put to Jeremiah Fraites‘ music depicted a dark scene of addiction—one very close to his…

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