TIFF22 REVIEW: My Sailor, My Love [2022]

I know what you’re up to. Howard (James Cosmo) lives what appears to be a hermitic life of unwavering obstinance. He doesn’t even open the door when his daughter Grace (Catherine Walker) and her husband Martin (Aidan O’Hare) arrive—a seemingly inconsequential fact until you realize it’s his birthday and she’s there to ready for the celebration. It would be easy to dismiss his demeanor as immovable then. Why would he act like this with his loved ones if that wasn’t how he acts with everyone? Except attending the local bar…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Sweet As [2023]

Maybe we have a story. It didn’t take long after watching Jub Clerc‘s Sweet As to see the comparison point my mind went to first (The Breakfast Club) was hardly an original thought. It’s an archetypal coming-of-age story for a reason. You see a mixed-bag group of troubled teens forced to confront their hardships during a mandated supervised excursion and allusions to John Hughes‘ classic aren’t far behind. Whereas he could get away with making that group consist of white suburban kids with differing degrees of entitlement and affluence, however,…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Riceboy Sleeps [2023]

Keep your eyes open. So-Young (Choi Seung-yoon) didn’t want to leave South Korea. She had no choice. The father of her newborn son committed suicide and, as an orphan who was never adopted, she had no other family. So, with nowhere to turn and a boy who couldn’t legally become a citizen due to being born out of wedlock, she immigrated to Canada to start anew. There she would build a home for the two of them and a wall in front of her past. Questions about Dong-Hyun’s (Dohyun Noel…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Baba [2022]

Why didn’t you come to me? The synopsis describes six-year-old Baba (Malik Wandera) as having the ability to teleport by closing his eyes to leave any situation. To watch Mbithi Masya‘s short film Baba unfold, however, is to realize we aren’t witnessing a superhero origin story. Baba isn’t shifting from one place to another on a whim. He isn’t testing his strength to push his gift to its limits. This is instead a tale about abuse and survival with Baba’s teleportation proving not of the body but the mind. He…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Muru [2022]

He’s chasing taniwha. New Zealand’s Tūhoe people have faced more than a century of aggression for daring to keep their culture alive. As relayed at the start of Tearepa Kahi‘s thriller Muru (a Māori word for their process of redressing transgressions), the facts are undeniable. In 1916, the police staged a raid to arrest Tūhoe prophet Rua Kenana on charges of sedition (he would later be acquitted and instead charged with resisting). A half-hour gunfight ensued leaving two dead and six wounded. Then the police staged another in 2007 to…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: North of Normal [2023]

Never give into fear. With an adolescence as singular as the one Cea Sunrise Person led, it would be strange if she didn’t write a memoir. Growing up in Yukon territory tipis. Squatting in strangers’ vacation homes with her mother’s revolving door of boyfriends. Suddenly being thrust into civilization as a teen outcast who looked at televisions as something otherworldly. Modeling—something her grandfather railed against as the epitome of everything wrong with the capitalistic society he left behind—becomes Person’s dream to finally build something of her own with the financial…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: The Swearing Jar [2022]

Context doesn’t count. Both Carey (Adelaide Clemens) and Simon (Patrick J. Adams) have news. Who should go first? Well, there’s a reason most people ask for the bad. Yes, they often want the good news to soften the blow rather than have it ruined by the bad, but what about the risk that doing it the other way around might cause the bad news never to be spoken? That’s what happens here. Who knows what might have been if Simon spoke first? Because he didn’t, though, Carey’s revelation that she’s…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Bones of Crows [2023]

See you soon. It starts in the 1800s. That’s when the first residential schools were opened in Canada as a means of “beating the Indian” out of indigenous children throughout the country. The front-facing narrative was always education, but the thousands of bodies found in unmarked graves and devastating psychological toll endured by survivors of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse prove otherwise. And while writer/director Marie Clements never shies away from showing that generational trauma as it pertains to Aline Spears and her extended family, she’s also unafraid to depict…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: A Gaza Weekend [2022]

We’re here. It’s the ‘promised’ land. Director Basil Khalil and co-writer Daniel Ka-Chun Chan waste no time setting the tone for their Middle Eastern comedy A Gaza Weekend. Conceived over a decade ago (and thus not a COVID film despite adding a couple COVID “jokes” into the script), its purpose is to satirize the very real conflict between Palestinians and Israelis to its most absurd extremes while also finding the common ground of humanity hiding beneath—much like Khalil’s enjoyable, Oscar-nominated short Ave Maria. As such, watching a scientist carelessly mill…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Yi miao zhong [One Second] [2020]

This is my only chance. The assumption is that our unnamed protagonist (Yi Zhang) is about to steal the reels of film that have just been loaded onto a motorcycle headed for the next town’s screening. He hides in the shadows as the two men bringing them out decide to hit the bar next door for a drink before the driver takes off. Yi skulks closer to the satchels as they leave, moving towards the windows to see that they have sat down and occupied themselves with conversation. With that…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Zalava [2021]

Below the waist. The inhabitants of Zalava were never meant to stay in one place. Their ancestors were nomads and now they’ve become farmers. So where then did the demons come from? Were they always here waiting for settlers? Did their relatives bring the evil with them? Or has the restlessness in their bones from staying in one place for so long simply made them stir crazy to the point of needing those spirits to provide context for their anxieties? They admit to the sergeant (Navid Pourfaraj‘s Massoud) from the…

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