REVIEW: All That Breathes [2022]

Have you ever felt vertigo looking at the sky? The origin story for why Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud have opened a wildlife rescue hospital inside their garage is a simple one: the injured black kite they brought to Delhi’s regular animal hospital was rejected from care because it was a non-vegetarian bird. These brothers couldn’t fathom that as a reason. Not when they were raised by a mother who believed no living creature should ever be held as superior or inferior to any other. So, they brought it home…

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REVIEW: The Fire That Took Her [2022]

Tell me there’s hope. There are many reasons why director Patricia E. Gillespie wanted to tell Judy Malinowski’s story, but the most crucial was her desire to ensure she wasn’t forgotten. That’s a risk in domestic violence cases regardless of severity since statistics state 1 in 3 American women experience intimate partner violence during their lifetime. It’s so common that no one will be surprised to discover Judy’s murderer not only had multiple priors for that specific charge (amongst others), but that she had called and told police she feared…

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BIFF22 REVIEW: Lovely Jackson [2023]

Welcome to my memory. More than just a documentary detailing the circumstances surrounding Rickey Jackson‘s tragic conviction for a murder he did not commit in 1975, Matt Waldreck‘s Lovely Jackson is a memoir that gives its subject the ability to exorcize his demons through a first-hand reckoning with the experience itself in his own words. The result creates an emotional juxtaposition that goes beyond simply narrating reenactments—it enlists Rickey to both play himself and stand watch as Mario Beverly plays the memory of the eighteen-year-old man he was upon entering…

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REVIEW: Sirens [2022]

But I don’t want to live in fear. While Rita Baghdadi‘s documentary Sirens centers upon the first all-female thrash metal band from the Middle East, it’s not really about the band. We follow them to a gig at Glastonbury, watch rehearsal sessions, and peek in on photoshoots, but the focus goes deeper than music. It reaches past the usual rock clichés to recognize that the struggle these women face is more immediate than striving to perform for sold out crowds or become signed by a label. This is about surviving…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Sidney [2022]

You’re not who you think you are. With Sidney Poitier‘s own voice providing the narrative backbone to Reginald Hudlin‘s documentary Sidney, we get to rediscover just what a wonderful storyteller he was. He speaks about his childhood in the Bahamas, his adolescence in Nassau, and the overnight culture clash of coming to Miami without realizing just what it meant to be a Black man in America with such emotion and drama that we can’t help but hang on his every word. A harrowing experience at the end of a police…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Maya and the Wave [2023]

Accidents are part of the routine. At twenty-six years of age, Brazilian Maya Gabeira was at the top of her sport. A world champion. Winner of countless awards. On covers of magazines. And repped by Red Bull. Looking to progress her career from becoming a pioneer for women in the big wave surfing game to holding a World Record that stood next to the men in control of the sport, she and mentor Carlos Burle traveled to Nazaré, Portugal to accomplish the unthinkable. Everything came apart instead. Not only did…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Free Money [2023]

We received funding to do an experiment. Everyone over the age of eighteen (those fifteen and older become eligible on their eighteenth birthday) will receive twenty-two dollars a month for twelve years. That’s the promise GiveDirectly (represented by co-founder Michael Faye) made to the poor rural Kenyan village of Kogutu and, to their credit, has met in full. The idea is that too many NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have ravaged third world countries by making assurances they never follow through on. People would give them money, they would disburse it as…

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REVIEW: Three Minutes: A Lengthening [2022]

Their trip to Poland was an extraordinary detour. You never know what you’ll find in the attic collecting dust. Even so, thinking you might uncover film of a Polish city inhabited by a thousand people who would surely end up murdered a couple years later in the Holocaust is hardly amongst anyone’s first guesses. That’s exactly what Glenn Kurtz discovered, though. Squirreled away in his parents’ Florida closet was a reel of 16mm film his grandfather took in 1938 during a trip to Europe. And amongst the usual tourist destinations…

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REVIEW: Claydream [2022]

Let’s get rolling. There’s intent in a brief snippet from an archival interview with Travis Knight where he’s asked about getting the animation bug at Laika (of which he’s co-owner with his father Phil Knight while also serving as President and CEO). His answer is, “No. I started at another studio.” It’s not a lie. He began his career at Will Vinton Studios after Phil became a minority shareholder. It’s also not the whole truth considering Laika is Will Vinton Studios, or, at least, what Will Vinton Studios became after…

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REVIEW: My Old School [2022]

Who touched my Chardonnay? When you have a story as wild as the one surrounding the sixteen-year-old Canadian student “Brandon Lee” enrolling in Glasgow’s Bearsden Academy, it truly is impossible to believe a movie hasn’t already been made. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, though. Alan Cumming was attached to play the lead role twenty-five years ago only to see the project evaporate. So, it’s fitting that writer/director Jono McLeod (a former classmate of “Lee’s” who witnessed the whole ordeal himself) would enlist the actor to play him now—this…

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REVIEW: Anonymous Club [2022]

Maybe it’s more useful to just talk. After becoming friends and collaborators during the early years of Courtney Barnett‘s career, music video director Danny Cohen asked to bring a 16mm camera onto her Tell Me How You Really Feel tour through America, Europe, and Asia. Not only that, but he also got the singer/songwriter to agree to speak her thoughts in diary form (Barnett would eventually address them all to Danny) to be used as narration and context for what would ultimately prove a three-year journey. The result is Anonymous…

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