Toronto International Film Festival | www.jaredmobarak.com

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

2019/08/302020/06/13 Jared Mobarak

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…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Hearts and Bones [2019]

2019/08/292020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

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…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Disappearance at Clifton Hill [2020]

2019/08/272020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

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…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Héraðið [The County] [2019]

2019/08/262020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

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,…

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

2019/08/252020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

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…

TIFF19 REVIEW: My English Cousin [2019]

2019/08/242020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

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…

TIFF19 REVIEW: III [2019]

2019/08/242020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

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…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Love Me Tender [2019]

2019/08/222020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

Don’t talk about her. Seconda (Barbara Giordano) is the second born child of Augusto (Maurizio Tabani) and Dominique (Anna Galante) and she cannot leave the house. Her agoraphobia might be at its most potent now at thirty-two years old, this latest stint of seclusion hitting the nine-month mark despite her parents imploring her to go outside. Sometimes zipping herself up in a blue hoodie provides the protection necessary to brave the world, but mostly Seconda would rather dance in her room and hiss at the family cat. Augusto and Dominique…

VENICE19 REVIEW: Boże Ciało [Corpus Christi] [2019]

2019/08/112020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

Silence can also be a prayer. Faith is inherently about putting your complete trust in something or someone without knowing whether the object deserves such blind allegiance. We have faith in God because believing there’s purpose to atrocities is easier than accepting a nihilistic outlook on life just like the presence of miracles proves good fortune is earned so you won’t feel guilty upon realizing how you have it better than someone else. It’s therefore impossible not to let it warp your morality until everything possesses the need for black…

TIFF18 REVIEW: Retrospekt [2018]

2018/09/222020/04/01 Jared Mobarak

Every Wednesday and … coffee. I can’t think of a better term to describe Esther Rots‘ Retrospekt than her own: “sensory cinema.” We get a feeling for what this means during the opening scene as Dan Geesin‘s score and Bas Kuijlenburg’s boomingly operatic baritone drowns out the action onscreen with English lyrics telling a story of which we’re not yet certain is even worth our attention. We don’t know these characters beyond visible traits: a pregnant woman, her husband, and their young girl packed up in an RV heading to…

TIFF18 REVIEW: Hjertelandet [Heartbound] [2018]

2018/09/212020/04/01 Jared Mobarak

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,…