Tag: Brandon Oakes

TIFF22 REVIEW: Rosie [2023]

Jared Mobarak

Love is what makes a family. The last thing Frédérique (Melanie Bray) needs is another mouth to feed. She’s already sneaking out the fire escape to avoid her landlord and can barely hold down a job due to her “passionate” disposition, so a child services agent (Josee Young‘s Barb) dropping off a niece (Keris Hope Hill‘s Rosie) she didn’t know she had proves quite the shock. More than needing to deal with the logistics problem, however, Fred also possesses a wealth of guilt and regret considering the reason the two…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Akilla’s Escape [2020]

Jared Mobarak

The bigger you get, the less you touch. To be born a prince is sometimes to be born a slave. Your birthright becomes your fate and there can be no deviation from it. Your duty is as much a part of your identity as your name because it’s the filter through which everyone sees you. And that goes for good and ill—for kingdoms and cartels. It’s why a general in the Jamaican drug trade’s Garrison Army out of New York City (Ronnie Rowe‘s Clinton Brown) named his son Akilla (Thamela…

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REVIEW: Blood Quantum [2020]

Jared Mobarak

You don’t name things that eat you. A Red Crow reservation citizen in Jeff Barnaby‘s Blood Quantum asks the question of whether they as indigenous people are immune to a vicious zombie outbreak that’s taken over North America or have simply been forgotten by the Earth during its cleanse. It’s easy to understand such a defeatist attitude considering the world at-large has done the latter for centuries. Colonialists slaughtered, infected, and cordoned off natives from lands they sought and stole, continuing to isolate them even today onto their tiny swaths…

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