VanRamblings absolutely loves lists. As the year nears its end, we are in list heaven — best albums, best books, best tech and, most important of all and much to our delight, best films, for which lists galore may be found.
Just this week, the National Board of Review critics association released their list of the best films of 2019, awarding several films of distinction in the process. The very next day, the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle — comprised of most of the continent’s finest film critics — released their list of 2019’s best films, conferring awards on actors, directors and films. In both instances, Martin Scorsese’s epic film The Irishman won Best Picture.
With the above in mind, Vancouver International Film Festival programmer Tom Charity put his list of the year’s best together — and, fortunate for us, all of those films will get a screening at the comfiest, most welcoming cinema venue in town, VIFF’s year ’round home, the cozy Vancity Theatre.
VIFF’s Best of 2019 gets underway on Friday, December 20th with …
Jordan Peele’s Us, starring NYFCC Best Actress winner, Lupita Nyong’o. Screens only once, on Saturday night, December 21st, 7:45pm, at the Vancity Theatre, on Seymour Street.
Clicking on any of the title links above and below, will take you to the film title’s VIFF page, where you will see a full description of the film, and where you may purchase tickets for the screening. Individual tickets, $11 (VIFF membership required). A discount three-ticket pack is available for $30.
Multiple award winner Monos will screen Monday, Dec. 23rd, 7:45pm, Vancity Theatre.
Next up, VanRamblings’ nominee as the best film of 2019, urgent, intimate, subtle, moving, the only truly wrenching, punch in the gut film of the year we’ve seen, an absolute must-see, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn’s tour-de-force The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open — set in and around Stamps Place (once called the Raymur Housing Project), on Vancouver’s eastside. As Sarah-Tai Black writes in the Globe and Mail, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is “transforming, striking, gentle, impactful, world-affirming, utterly remarkable, essential, heartrending, tender … and wholly authentic.”
The Body Remembers. Boxing Day, Thursday, December 26th, 7:45pm, Vancity Theatre.
The Farewell will screen on Friday, December 27th, 7:20pm, at the Vancity Theatre.
Honeyland will screen on Saturday, December 28th, 7:20pm, at the Vancity Theatre.
And screening immediately following the luminous & utterly unforgettable, award-winning documentary Honeyland, Australian director Jennifer Kent’s controversial follow-up to The Babadook, the unrelenting horror pic …
The Nightingale screens on Saturday, December 28th, 9pm, at the Vancity Theatre.
And on Sunday, December 29th, 7pm at the Vancity Theatre an international film feature double bill that will knock your socks off: Spain’s auteur filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s best film in years, with a Cannes Best Actor award-winning performance by Antonio Banderas at its centre, Pain and Glory — which will screen at the Vancity Theatre on Sunday, December 29th at 7pm — offers mature, understated and evocative filmmaking of the first order, combining a deep sense of humanity with a touch of erotic beauty, an emotional rendering of a person that is at once gentle and naked, hushed, agonizing and dazzling, full of life, electric, heart-wrenching and as piercing and deeply intimate a reflection on what it means to grow old as you’ll ever see on film, Pain and Glory is the filmmaker’s best and most personal movie in years, a cinematic momento full of indelible moments, redolent with a meditative force that will knock you sideways, a tragicomic swirl of heartbreak and joy, and an utter triumph. A must-see.
And at 9pm, following the screening of Pain and Glory, Mati Diop’s stunner Atlantics, about which at one time lead Globe and Mail film critic Liam Lacey wrote, “A magic realist fantasy, a ghost story, a love story and political allegory, a film of tactile intimacy and teeming energy, about women’s autonomy, migration and corruption, vital and realist, a world-shattering film about unspeakable tragedy, Atlantics packs a deceptive amount of complexity into its 104 minute running time, offering a narrative perspective about class and post-imperialism that is touching, romantic, impressively nuanced and an expertly rendered tour-de-force.”
A World Cinema Dramatic prize winner at Sundance earlier this year, director Joanna Hogg’s best film yet, The Souvenir, is an instant British classic. The New York Times’ A. O. Scott writes, “The Souvenir feels like a whispered confidence, an intimate disclosure that shouldn’t be betrayed because it isn’t really yours,” while Guy Lodge writes in Variety, “Achingly well-observed in its study of a young artist inspired, derailed and finally strengthened by a toxic relationship, it is at once the coming-of-age story of many women and a specific creative manifesto for one of modern British cinema’s most singular writer-directors.”
The Souvenir screens on Monday, December 30th, 7:45pm, at the Vancity Theatre.
There are four more films that are screening as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Best of 2019 film series — at least two of which will vye for a Best Picture win at the Oscars on February 9th, but you’ll just have to click here for the titles of those films, and the date and time that each will screen at the Vancity Theatre. Enjoy your film-going holidays.
Best of 2019 | Video created by Cindy Shi for the Vancouver International Film Festival.
For the 2020 Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences earlier this year voted to change the name of the Oscar award traditionally known as Best Foreign Film to Best International Feature Film, because as Larry Karaszewski and Diane Weyermann, co-chairs of the International Feature Film Committee told the press: “We have noted that the reference to ‘foreign’ is outdated within the global filmmaking community.”
In 2019, countries across the globe had until October 1st to submit a film for Best International Feature Film Oscar consideration. In 2018, 87 films were brought forward for adjudication. In 2019, a record of 93 films from countries across the globe were submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a list that will be winnowed down throughout November and December — until 5 am Monday, January 13th, 2020, when the Academy will make its annual Oscar announcement, leaving five nominated films remaining in the Best International Feature Film category.
Below, a list of all the international films submitted to the Academy for consideration, and on the screening schedule of VIFF 2019.
This year’s Cannes’ prestigious Un Certain Regard winner, here’s what VIFF 2019’s programme has to say about The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão:
Karim Aïnouz’s (Madame Satã) stylish, colour-saturated “tropical melodrama” tells the story of two sisters, proper EurÍdice (Carol Duarte) and freedom-loving Guida (Julia Stockler), in 1950s Rio de Janeiro who are divided by their father’s duplicitous misogyny. Pure pleasure for the eyes and told from a decidedly feminist slant, this is a tale of “high emotion articulated with utmost sincerity and heady stylistic excess, all in the perspiring environs of midcentury Rio de Janeiro.”
This is Brazil’s 49th submission with four previous nominations; Keeper of Promises in 1962, 1995’s O Quatrilho, 1997’s Four Days In September and Central Station in 1998.
Screens at 9pm, on Monday, October 7th, at The Centre, and again the next day, Tuesday, October 8th, 2:45pm, at the Vancouver Playhouse. Spider | Chile | Andrés Wood
From the VIFF online description of Chile’s official Oscar entry …
Andrés Wood, director of Machuca, one of VIFF’s biggest ever hits, returns to the defining event in modern Chile’s political history — Pinochet’s 1973 coup d’état — but this time in a dark thriller mode. In 1973, Inés (María Valverde), her husband Justo (Gabriel Urzúa), and her lover Gerardo (Pedro Fontaine), all members of a violent right-wing group, pull off a political crime that changes the course of history. Forty-odd years later, Inés (now played by Argentinean legend Mercedes Morán) is a successful businesswoman, but Gerardo (now Marcelo Alonso), motivated by revenge and obsession, wants to restart the nationalist movement of their collective past, a past that Inés and Justo (now Felipe Armas) are desperate to keep hidden …
One might think Chile is long past Pinochet, but Woods puts paid to that romantic notion. Through his depiction of a love triangle gone bad, the entitlement of the privileged, the perverse idealism of the right, and the cruelty and greed fuelling so much of Chile today, he fashions a painfully twisted tale that suggests that although Pinochet is gone, his shadow lingers on …”
Screens at 9pm, on Monday, October 7th, at The Centre, and again the next day, Tuesday, October 8th, 2:45pm at the Vancouver Playhouse. The Painted Bird | Czech Republic | Václav Marhoul
Václav Marhoul’s “stunning adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s controversial 1965 novel/memoir” caused mass walkouts when it screened at the Venice Film Festival, and more than a few walkouts at TIFF, for this blistering, bracingly defiant and emotionally plangent film that is rife with uncompromising, unvarnished brutality (murder, rape, torture, bestiality) that, as Deborah Young writes in her THR review of the film, “doesn’t begin to convey the emotional scope of this tender, bruising, exuberant film.”
Stayed tuned. According to VIFF, there are no further events scheduled at this time. Perhaps Tom Charity will bring it back to the Vancity Theatre. Queen of Hearts | Denmark | May el-Toukhy
Director and co-writer May el-Toukhy offers a master class in how to shoot a blossoming physical attraction. From shy touching while trying to find the perfect spot for the “world’s smallest tattoo”, to the frankly explicit sex that actually seems sexy … to confuse matters, though, Queen of Hearts explores the inappropriate relationship involving a middle-aged lawyer’s twisting, highly-charged sexual tryst with her troubled teenage stepson, the film on the one hand an impossibly glamorous, sexually charged and immoral melodrama and on the other a subtle Sirkian, almost Hitchcockian tragedy that explores the wages of familial sin and deceit, all while peeling back the veneer of ultra-civilized Scandinavian society. Not to be missed.
Screens at 9:15pm on Monday, October 7th, at the Vancouver Playhouse. Les Misérables | France | Ladj Ly
Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes this year, Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables — débuting at VIFF 2019 as part of the Spotlight on France series — emerged as one of Jeff Wells’ (Hollywood Elsewhere) favourite films at Cannes this year, a film he describes as “explosive, urgent, furious, riveting, breathless and impactful,” and about which VIFF’s festival guide says …
Set in the same suburban Paris neighbourhood, Montfermeil, used by Victor Hugo as the location for the Thénardiers’ Inn in his Les Misérables, débuting director Ladj Ly’s gripping, incendiary police-thriller gives us a young cop, Stéphane (Damien Bonnard), who joins an Anti-Crime Squad team led by loose cannon Chris (co-writer Alexis Manenti, superb) and is soon immersed in a world of poverty and internecine power struggles. When images of police brutality start circulating, the shit hits the fan…
Quite simply, Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables is not to be missed.
Screens at 6:30pm (today), Wednesday, October 2nd, at the Vancouver Playhouse, and for a final time at VIFF 2019, next week, on Thursday, October 10th, 4pm, at International Village 9. Those Who Remained | Hungary | Barnabás Tóth
A smash hit at Telluride, director Barnabás Tóth’s lyrical story of the healing power of love in the midst of national conflict, lost and trauma, Those Who Remained reveals the healing process of Holocaust survivors through the eyes of a young girl in post-World War II Hungary.
After an extensive shorts career, Tóth’s feature début focuses on 42-year-old doctor and concentration camp survivor Aldo, his new friendship with 16-year-old Klara, and the suspicion it brings in Soviet Hungary. The country recently won the foreign-language award for Lázló Nemes’ Son Of Saul in 2016, with one other win for Istaván Szabó’s Mephisto in 1982. Those Who Remained will screen two more times at VIFF 2019: on Saturday, October 5th at 7pm, at SFU Goldcorp; and for a final time, on Thursday, October 10th at 11:15am, at the home of the festival, the Vancity Theatre. A White White Day | Iceland | Hlynur Pálmason
Rigorously charting the fracturing of a grieving former police detective’s world as he comes to suspect that his late wife, who died in a strange car accident, was having an affair with a younger colleague, this deeply unsettling and grimly hypnotic second feature by Icelandic writer-director Hlynur Palmason, A White White Day won both the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award and Critics’ Week prize at Cannes 2019.
As Lisa Nesselson writes in her review of the film in Screen Daily …
A White White Day is an exquisite, complex, visually arresting and emotionally rewarding film, the tug of the splendidly varied landscape in this film both internal and external in a manner that would be hard to pull off in a dense urban setting, the pleasingly off-kilter string score a plus, and the trajectory of the film percolating from tender — the protagonist’s relationship with his granddaughter — to robustly no-nonsense, offering the viewer throughout with a flesh and blood catalogue of ways to be masculine, to be human, and how to grieve.
The film’s title refers to an Icelandic proverb suggesting that on days so “white” that the earth meets the sky, the dead can communicate with those still living.
Screens at 4pm on Monday, October 7th, at International Village 9. Adam | Morocco | Maryam Touzani
Adam is a deceptively small story about elemental themes, most specifically the beauty and mystery of motherhood. First-time feature filmmaker Maryam Touzani has dedicated the movie to her own mother, and indeed this is a kind, resonant portrait of two women — one who is a mother and one who is reluctantly about to become one. Deft performances from Lubna Azabal and Nisrin Erradi add heart and soul to this slender chronicle of a de facto family learning to rely on one another.
Screening in Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year to much deserved acclaim, One of Adam’s central pleasures is its calm arrival at fundamental truths about how women nurture and provide — even when they themselves receive little of the same.
Screens today, Wednesday, October 2nd, at 8:30pm, at the Vancouver Playhouse (remember: Les Misérables screens at The Playhouse at 6:30pm — kinda makes for a perfect Wednesday night double bill, don’tcha think?). It Must Be Heaven | Palestine | Elia Suleiman
This is Suleiman’s second submission for this award; he also directed Palestine’s first-ever entry, 2003’s Divine Intervention. Starring the director himself alongside Ali Suliman, François Girard, and Gael Garcia Bernal, It Must Be Heaven tells the story of a man who escapes his native Palestine for a new life only to face the same challenges. It played in Competition at Cannes this year. This is Palestine’s twelfth submission for the award, having been nominated twice in 2006 for Paradise Now and 2014 for Omar. It Must Be Heaven screens twice at VIFF 2019, both times at Cinema 10, International Village, on Saturday, October 5th 9:30pm, and Monday, October 7th at 1:45pm. The Whistlers | Romania | Corneliu Porumboiu
Cannes 2019 Competition title The Whistlers follows Cristi, a corrupt police officer and whistle blower for mafia, who flies to the Canary Islands to free Zsolt, a crooked businessman. Under police surveillance, Cristi sets about to encourage Zsolt to reveal where he’s hidden 30 million euros.
Ready to give festival audiences a taste of his brand of bone-dry black comedy satirizing bureaucracy and corruption in post-Ceauçescu Romania, Corneliu previously won the Palme d’Or for 12:08 East Of Bucharest in 2006. This is Romania’s 25th submission, with no previous Oscar nods. The Whistlers will screen three times at VIFF 2019: at 2pm on Friday, October 4th at Cinema 10, International Village; on Monday, October 7th at 6:45pm at the Rio Theatre; and for a final time on Wednesday, October 9th at 4pm, again at Cinema 10, International Village. Beanpole | Russia | Kantemir Balagov
In this richly burnished, occasionally harrowing rendering of the persistent scars of war, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), attempt to readjust to a haunted post-WWII Leningrad.
And, according to the VIFF 2019 programme guide …
An unforgettable take on war’s human costs, Russian wunderkind and former student of Alexander Sokurov Kantemir Balagov’s visually poetic and beautifully photographed drama is set in a Leningrad of near-intolerable privation in the aftermath of Russia’s WWII “victory.” Lanky nurse Iya (Miroshnichenko), nicknamed “Beanpole” for her tall, thin body, works in a hospital and suffers PTSD-related seizures that leave her unconscious. When fiery Masha (Perelygina), the woman soldier Iya worships, returns from the frontlines, their intense relationship — tinged by a tragedy that occurs during one of Iya’s episodes and subject to the many horrors both of them have lived through – takes centre stage. As the desperate citizenry scrambles to survive, can the women return to a life even resembling normalcy?
Balagov elicits amazing performances from Miroshnichenko and Perelygina, both newcomers to the screen, and elevates Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexeievich’s stories of Russian women’s experiences during WWII – his inspiration for the film – to understandably harsh and yet ethereally beautiful heights. Beanpole is a remarkable work for anyone to have made, let alone for someone only 28 years old.
“Exceptionally crafted, devastating… ferocious, and extraordinary… [It] marks the undeniable arrival of Kantemir Balagov as a major talent…” — Jessica Kiang, Variety
FIPRESCI Prize, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 19
Screens twice next week, on Wednesday, October 9th at 6:15pm, International Village 10, and on the final day of VIFF 2019, on Friday, October 11th, 12:45pm, at the Vancity Theatre. Atlantics | Senegal | Mati Diop
Most films that chronicle the plight of Africans undertaking the treacherous traversing of the Atlantic in search of better lives tend to be male-centric and grounded in stark realism. Mati Diop’s “Atlantics” upends that archetype, and harnesses fantasy and social relevance to tell a haunting story that focuses on the women who are often left behind. It’s one of the most original films of the year, and should continue to generate intrigue at both NYFF and VIFF en route to its Netflix launch.
Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar, Senegal, but the construction workers haven’t been paid for months. Seventeen-year-old Ada (Mama Sané) is in love with Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), one of the construction workers, but has been promised to another man by her family. One night, the workers (including Souleiman) decide to leave the country by sea, in search of brighter futures. Whether they make it is a mystery.
Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding. Meanwhile, a mysterious fever starts to spread with incalculable ramifications. The strange, poetic circumstances keep piling up. “Atlantics” is a fantastical blend of romance and socio-political commentary at once, laced together by a surreal dreamscape.
But above all, this is a story about an impossible love, destroyed by injustice. Not since Diop’s own uncle, director Djibril Diop Mambety, made the seminal “Touki Bouki” has cinema seen an African couple worthy of the tragedy that is “Romeo and Juliet.” Diop made history when the film premiered at Cannes earlier this year — becoming the first black woman to direct a film featured in the festival’s Competition section. It won the Grand Prix, kicking off a festival run that will come to a head when it arrives at NYFF and VIFF with much-deserved hype.
Screens at 9:15pm, Wednesday, October 7th, Rio Theatre. Parasite | South Korea | Bong Joon-ho
The 2019 Palme d’Or-winning Parasite chronicles the relationship between the wealthy Park family and the impoverished Kim family and the influence of greed and discrimination on it. The film stars Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, and Cho Yeo-jeong. This marks the 31st submission from South Korea with no nominations yet; Bong was the first Korean director to receive the top Cannes prize earlier this year. Parasite will screen once more at VIFF 2019, on Sunday, October 6th, 9pm at The Centre. Pain and Glory | Spain | Pedro Almodóvar
With his seventh time representing Spain in the international feature category, Almodóvar sets a new record for the country, ahead of José Luis Garci’s six occasions. Cannes 2019 Competition title Pain and Glory reunites him with regular collaborators Antonio Banderas (who won Best Actor on the Croisette) and Penélope Cruz for the autobiographical story of a director looking back at his life and career. Spain has four wins and 15 nominations for the international award, including Almodóvar’s All About My Mother win in 2000, and Alejandro Amenábar’s nomination for The Sea Inside in 2005. Pain and Glory will screen at 6pm, Wednesday, October 9th at The Centre. And Then We Danced | Sweden | Levan Akin
In this Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 2019 title, a dancer’s training at the National Georgian Ensemble with his partner Mary is disturbed by the arrival of Irakli. Lead actor Levan Gelbakhiani won the Best Actor prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival. Ana Javakishvili and Anano Makharadze co-star. Sweden has been nominated for this award 16 times, with Ingmar Bergman winning their three awards for The Virgin Spring in 1961, Through a Glass Darkly in 1962 and Fanny and Alexander in 1984. This is Akin’s second feature film after the 2015 film The Circle.
No further VIFF 2019 screenings are scheduled at this time.
Well, that’s it for now for our full weekend coverage of the probable Oscar contenders that are set to screen this year at the 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival. All VanRamblings’ VIFF 2019 columns may be accessed by clicking on the graphic above.
Each year for a long time now, VanRamblings has most looked forward to the Vancouver International Film Festival’sShorts Programme, as curated by VIFF programmer Sandy Gow, a person of immense humanity and goodness, a man of heart, wit and intelligence, and a man who loves film.
Whether a Short be five minutes in length, like British filmmaker Chris Ullens’ Leanne Womack’s “Hollywood”, or 14 minutes in length, as is the case with Taiwanese director Clifford Liu’s moving, muted yet powerful Grandpa, the 35 films Sandy Gow has curated into the four International Shorts programmes in 2019 are punch-in-the-gut films of the first order, or as Sandy was telling VanRamblings last week, “Each of the 35 filmmakers included in this year’s Shorts programme have more to say in six minutes than most feature filmmakers do in two hours.” And so it is, and so it is.
According to Sandy, in 2019 shorts submissions hit record numbers …
“We were up close to 90% in submissions this year, with over 1320 shorts made available to VIFF in 2019. Although there’s a team of six people who assist in the screening of the shorts, at the end of the day, the final choice is mine. Before handing films off to the screening team, I watched all or part of 950 films, watching 250 all the way through — after having done this for as long as I have, you come to know what works and what doesn’t. Out of the 1320 submissions only 35 films were chosen for the VIFF 2019 International Shorts programme, and as per usual the selected shorts were placed into four themed shorts programmes.”
Those four themed 2019 International Shorts programmes are as follows … A Matter of Identity | | 8 shorts | 112 minutes
Thursday, October 3rd, 6pm, International Village 8 Saturday, October 5th, 12:30pm, International Village 8
“In A Matter of Identity we have the world première of flush from Sheridan O’Donnell, a filmmaker who was here last year,” says Sandy Gow, “when I introduced him to Squamish-based cinematographer Todd Duym. The two of them got together, and the result is the world première of flush. Todd also shot Tolerance, which is part of another one of our shorts programmes, Modern Tales from a Conflicted World.”
“We also have the world première of O Holy Ghost, a delightfully surreal comedy along the lines of The Lobster, from a few years back.”
Friday, October 4th, 3pm, International Village 8
Monday, October 7th, 6pm, International Village 8
In a world defined by unrelenting, unforgiving change, in spite of and perhaps because of social media and the daily announcements of technical innovations that are supposed to make our lives easier and create a sense of connection, loneliness and isolation in societies across the globe remains rife. From the experimental documentaries to animation and almost everything in between, the shorts in Modern Tales from a Conflicted World mean to help us break down our pervasive sense of anomie, while delivering thought-provoking insight into the questions which besiege us, spanning the spectrum of our existence, and perhaps a few answers, too. Troubled Voices, Teen Lives | | 8 shorts | 106 minutes
Tuesday, October 1st, 11am, International Village 9
With apologies to Sandy for not publishing our International Shorts Programme column earlier, the teen shorts programme is always the most popular of each year’s four shorts programmes Sandy curates, with a packed house for the initial screening yesterday, and only standby tickets available for tomorrow’s 11am screening of Troubled Voices, Teen Lives.
Each year, the international teen shorts programme presented by VIFF explores the breadth and complexity of teen lives, and the challenges teens face at school, in their homes, and in the larger world. While teens often struggle to both express their feelings and be heard, especially when their perspective challenges the conventional norm, each year this international shorts programme has always managed to capture the full range of teen lives, comedic, dramatic, revealing, that should you attend tomorrow’s screening will surely more fully inform your perspective on teen lives. Somebody Dies | | 8 shorts | 107 minutes
Friday, October 4th, 6pm, International Village 8
Sunday, October 6th, 12:15pm, International Village 8
Says Sandy Gow, “Most of the films submitted to VIFF this year had featured, in some measure, a perspective on death. That’s true, surprisingly, of each of our four international shorts programmes this year, the tenuousness of our existence. As I wrote in the programme …
Death is the common denominator, often forcing difficult choices, emotional upheaval and a more philosophical understanding of life on those who are left behind.
Somebody Dies is my favourite of the four programmes this year, each of the eight films included in the programme stunningly beautiful and heartbreaking in their realization, a coterie of films that while spanning the filmic form gives a sense of meaning to each life lived.”
Sandy is wont to point out that there are many more Shorts Programmes than the four programmes he creates, totaling some 100+ films overall, that are included in VIFF 2019’s schedule this year, all worth checking out.
According to IndieWire’s Kate Erbland, Eric Kohn, Anne Thompson, Christian Blauvelt, David Ehrlich, Tambay Obenson, Jude Dry — superb and discerning film critics all — from buzzy awards players to unexpected gems, this year’s edition of the New York Film Festival is packed with thrilling choices. Today on VanRamblings, seven of those NYFF57 films that are also screening at the 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival! Atlantics
Most films that chronicle the plight of Africans undertaking the treacherous traversing of the Atlantic in search of better lives tend to be male-centric and grounded in stark realism. Mati Diop’s “Atlantics” upends that archetype, and harnesses fantasy and social relevance to tell a haunting story that focuses on the women who are often left behind. It’s one of the most original films of the year, and should continue to generate intrigue at both NYFF and VIFF en route to its Netflix launch.
Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar, Senegal, but the construction workers haven’t been paid for months. Seventeen-year-old Ada (Mama Sané) is in love with Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), one of the construction workers, but has been promised to another man by her family. One night, the workers (including Souleiman) decide to leave the country by sea, in search of brighter futures. Whether they make it is a mystery.
Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding. Meanwhile, a mysterious fever starts to spread with incalculable ramifications. The strange, poetic circumstances keep piling up. “Atlantics” is a fantastical blend of romance and socio-political commentary at once, laced together by a surreal dreamscape.
But above all, this is a story about an impossible love, destroyed by injustice. Not since Diop’s own uncle, director Djibril Diop Mambety, made the seminal “Touki Bouki” has cinema seen an African couple worthy of the tragedy that is “Romeo and Juliet.” Diop made history when the film premiered at Cannes earlier this year — becoming the first black woman to direct a film featured in the festival’s Competition section. It won the Grand Prix, kicking off a festival run that will come to a head when it arrives at NYFF and VIFF with much-deserved hype. — TO Cunningham
Legendary modern dance choreographer Pina Bausch presaged her American contemporary Merce Cunningham in a few non-dance-related areas: The lauded German artist passed away mere weeks before Cunningham did in 2009, and her work inspired a jaw-dropping 3D film eight years before Cunningham’s received the same sort of cinematic treatment. It’s hard to imagine a more fitting double feature than Wim Wenders’ “Pina” and Alla Kovgan’s upcoming “Cunningham,” a pair of 3D documentary features that bring to vivid life the work and artistry of two icons of modern dance through contemporary means.
Much like “Pina,” Kovgan’s film attempts to translate the magic of Cunningham’s live work (much of it crafted in New York City itself) to the big screen through 3D technology and an array of key archival material. Also like Bausch and the many devoted students she left behind, “Cunningham” grapples with the question of a choreographer’s legacy and what can actually remain of the kind of work that can be so literally fleeting. A choreographer is surely a creator, but when they make something as ephemeral as a dance — not a painting or a film or a sculpture, something that can be held — what becomes of their work? It’s a complicated question, and one that takes center stage in “Cunningham,” which helps unpack the choreographer’s own forward-thinking take on how to preserve his own legacy. — KE Marriage Story
Netflix launched the “Marriage Story” bandwagon with raves at Venice and rolled into Telluride when Martin Scorsese presented his stunned “Silence” star Adam Driver with his tribute medallion. (The 35-year-old actor also showed “The Report” at both Telluride and Toronto.) But the role that will nab him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination (he scored a Supporting Actor nod this year for “BlacKkKlansman”) is Noah Baumbach’s wrenching (and painfully funny) divorce drama.
In fact, all three of its stars could land Oscar attention. Driver plays a New York stage director whose actress wife (never-nominated Scarlett Johansson) hires a hard-driving lawyer (fast-talking two-time Oscar nominee Laura Dern) in order to keep their young son in Los Angeles. NYFF and VIFF audiences will likely enjoy the push-and-pull between the two coasts; the film is both a look at the quieter reaches of LA and a distinctly New York valentine. When Driver is forced to take a crucial phone call in the middle of a busy street, Gothamites will sympathize.
While Baumbach gives both divorce parties plenty of attention, Driver gets to sing Stephen Sondheim at classic New York hangout Knickerbocker. Advantage Driver. — AT Pain and Glory
Filmed in filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s real-life home and cast with longtime collaborators Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, “Pain and Glory” has been touted as the closest thing to memoir we may ever see from the beloved Spanish auteur. Not only is Almodóvar one of the select few living filmmakers known only by their last name, that last name has become synonymous with a certain poetic intrigue, a colorful but emotionally-grounded aesthetic, and a joyous sensuality.
With his 21st feature film, the director turns the camera inward in what may be his most personal film to date. Banderas won the Best Actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Spanish director Salvador Mallo, whose crisp Jordans and color-blocked shirts make him a none-too-thinly-veiled ringer for the stylish Almodóvar. Preoccupied by the aches and pains of aging, memories of a love affair, and a fraught project, Salvador tries heroin on a whim.
Moving between time periods, “Pain and Glory” visits his ’60s-era childhood, with Cruz as the filmmaker’s mother, the heyday of the ’80s, and his mid-career conflicts in the present day. A return to form for the filmmaker who never truly left, “Pain and Glory” sees the master pushing himself to newer depths. NYFF played a key role in elevating Almodóvar’s U.S. profile, and this year, he repaid the favor by designing the festival’s poster. (He’ll also celebrate his birthday at the festival.) But his movie is the real star of this year’s show. NYFF and VIFF have always been firmly filmmaker-focused, and “Pain and Glory” offers a distinct and fresh take on what it means to be a true auteur. — JD Parasite
For sheer storytelling bravura, it’s hard to top the armrest-gripping, breath-snatching suspense of “Parasite,” a thriller that also manages to be a blistering critique of trickle-down economics. This is one Palme d’Or winner that nobody will contest — a propulsive yarn more exciting than the most exciting action films released this year.
Except it’s not an action film: It’s a character study about a family of grifters who slowly worm their way into the life of an industrialist’s wife and her family. Are they feeding off their wealthy hosts like the title suggests? Is director Bong Joon Ho saying that crime is the natural outgrowth (and perhaps the only recourse for the marginalized) of capitalism? You decide. (But you probably won’t until well after the end credits have rolled because you’ll just be so caught up in finding out what happens next.)
“Hitchcockian” is one of the most over-used and inexpertly applied adjectives in film debates, but “Parasite” deserves the label not just because of its high-wire plot but its scathing dissection of class politics as set in a modernist house even the famously interior design-minded Master of Suspense would adore. (Seriously, this piece of real estate may even top the homes in “North by Northwest” and “Suspicion.”) Hitchcock famously said that his films were not a slice of life but a slice of cake. By the time the credits roll, Bong shows that even that kind of confection may not go down so easily. — CB Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma’s absolute barnburner of a romance may not be in the running for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars — France submitted Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables” instead, despite the fact that nothing has a real shot of beating “Parasite — but “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” still has plenty of kindling to keep it lit. A profoundly tender story of self-discovery and creation that sparks when a reluctant 18th century bride-to-be (the brilliant Adèle Haenel) meets the beautiful woman who’s hired to paint her wedding portrait (the just-as-brilliant Noémie Merlant), this heart-stopping masterpiece not only won the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes this year, it was also named one of IndieWire’s 100 Best Films of the Decade; one accolade may be slightly more prestigious than the other, but it’s worth putting Sciamma’s accomplishment into proper context.
Austere where Sciamma’s “Tomboy” was anxious, and restrained where “Girlhood” was outgoing, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is a period romance that’s traditional in some ways, progressive in others, and altogether so damn powerful that it will leave you weak in the knees (especially after that all-timer of an ending). “Portrait” may not be able to ride the “Best International Feature” wave, but here’s hoping that its New York and Vancouver premières will help propel the film towards other forms of recognition. — DE Vitalina Varela
The winner of the Golden Leopard from this year’s Locarno Film Festival is a perfect opportunity to discover the wonders of Pedro Costa. The Portuguese director conjures dark, dreamlike portraits of post-colonial neglect and yearning that hover somewhere between fantasy and neorealism, horror and melodrama, spirituality and desperation. Costa’s fifth journey into the shantytown Fontainhas, which lies on the outskirts of Lisbon, once again showcases Costa’s masterful ability to mine cinematic poetry from a unique environment and the mournful figures who wander its murky depths.
The Costa Expanded Universe stems back to 2006’s “Colossal Youth,” when he first began exploring the Cape Verdean residents of Fontainhas by casting members of the immigrant community as themselves. The ravishing blend of light and shadow captures the characters as they explore the claustrophobic interiors of their ramshackle homes and muse about their aimless lives. Costa’s dour, humorless aesthetic takes time to settle in and certainly requires a degree of openness to his approach, but “Vitalina Varela” is a perfect distillation of the rewarding nature of that process.
At its centre, the eponymous Vitalina steps up from her supporting role in Costa’s “Horse Money,” playing a version of herself as a woman who returns to the shantytown after her estranged husband has passed. As Vitalina roams the town and wrestles with the past, she hovers in a mesmerizing labyrinth of soul-searching and grief (she also befriends a despondent priest, Ventura, who oversees an abandoned house of prayer as if preaching from the end of times). “Vitalina Varela” feels at once otherworldly and familiar in its evocation of perseverance amid dire conditions; it’s a tragic lament with the slightest glimmer of hope. NYFF did the right thing by putting “Vitalena” in its main slate, rather than its experimental sidebar; this is the sort of singular creative vision that everyone who cares about movies should seek out. — EK
C’mon back tomorrow when VanRamblings will present in-depth insight and information on this year’s can’t miss Shorts programme, and an interview with VIFF’s longtime Shorts programmer, the ever-so-humane Sandy Gow.
In the meantime, click on the graphic below to access all of VanRamblings’ coverage to date of our 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival.
