Sunday was a sodden day at the 32nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival, which fit perfectly, of course, with the underlying theme of the Festival: the Cinema of Despair. In 2013, VanRamblings seems to have internalized that despair and processed it in such a way as to prejudice our ability to write (in the short form poetic manner of years past) about the films we screened pre-Festival, and since VIFF32’s opening day.
Today, we’ll attempt to rectify the circumstance of previous days’ lack of writing on things cinematic, and offer readers a quick, pungent take on three VIFF films which have most impressed us in 2013, as well as a guide to what-not-to-miss on this overcast and inclement last day of September.
VanRamblings has already written about the three films we’ve found most rewarding, gut-wrenching in their own idiosyncratic way, and authentic and truthful in their exposition. Those films are: Oil Sands Karaoke (VanRamblings cannot imagine that this doc will not emerge as our favourite VIFF32 doc), the spectacularly engaging Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, and Felix, the film which pulled us in and threw us around more than any other film we’ve seen at the film festival this year.

A Bag of Flour (Grade: B+): With a wildly sympathetic, stubborn and strong-minded heroine at film’s centre (played to wrenching affect by newcomer Hafsia Herzi), director Kadija Leclere’s powerful indictment of women’s subjugation in the Moroccan state, with its undercurrent of insurrection and social change, has emerged early in VIFF 2013 as a subtle, elegantly shot favourite among VIFF cinephiles, including this writer. As we wrote previously, A Bag of Flour — the story of a young kidnapped girl growing up a stranger in her own land, deep within a repressive rural, Muslim Middle East state — offers a thoughtful reflection on female identity in contemporary Arab society, the film destined to become one of VIFF 2013’s most memorable films.

La jaula de oro (Grade: A-): Humanist filmmaking of the first order, the best Latin American émigr&eacute drama to play at the Vancouver International Film Festival in several years, directory Diego Quemada-Diez’s powerful, absorbing and suspenseful drama about four teenagers on their 3800km journey from Guatemala to the U.S. border by train offers impactful, seat-of-your-pants viewing as the foursome experience cruelty and violence at almost every turn in a series of brutal encounters with corrupt cops, ruthless bandits, kidnappers, and sharpshooting U.S. border guards. Not an easy sit, but gripping and unforgettable, with touching characters at film’s centre.

Our Sunhi (Grade: B+): A piffle, a delight, and an entirely engaging film of some wit and intelligence and well-realized directorial ambition, Our Sunhi is another in the feminist contingent of films we’ve taken in a VIFF 2013, with (as is the case in A Bag of Flour) the heroine at film’s centre presenting as an ambitious take no guff, strong-willed — and at all times sympathetic — on screen presence. A film filled with romantic frustration and confusion, this is Korean off-kilter comedy at its very best. Entirely winning, and absolutely worth attending.

Today — Monday, Sept. 30th — you don’t want to miss the buzz films that’ll be screening throughout the day, as is the case with …

• Stray Dogs: Currently screening at the New York Film Festival, Tsai Ming-liang’s new film relates the story of a middle-aged father, and his young son and daughter, who during the day work as human billboards. Bleakly funny and absolutely terrifying film fare. Not to be missed.
• The Great Passage: A quirky tug of love drama involving a nerdy dictionary maker and a sexy chef, Japan’s foreign-language Oscar nominee offers quiet, gentle audience-friendly film fare.
• A Time in Quchi: One of this year’s buzz films, Taiwanese director Chang Tso-ch’s new film offers delicate and poetic film fare full of offbeat humour, this warmly conventional coming-of-ager emerging as an inviting meditation on transience.
• Matterhorn: The pick of the day, with very strong strong buzz emerging from its first Festival screening. We wrote about about the film last Wednesday.

That pretty much wraps the post for the day. We’ll leave you with this VIFF film search advice: as searching for films on the VIFF website is an exercise in frustration, disappointment and near calumny, there is a way around the dilemma of finding information on VIFF 2013 films: whoever “spidered” the VIFF site for Google has done a spectacular job. To access information on the VIFF website for any film playing at VIFF 2013, simply place the title of the film and the word VIFF in the Google search box, and voilà … VIFF 2013’s web page for the film title on which you’re seeking information.

VanRamblings’ pre-and-early coverage of the Festival was expansive. If you haven’t glanced through this past week’s posts, here are some links …

• For those of you who did not catch last Monday’s introductory VIFF 2013 post, just click here.
• Parts 1, 2 and 3 of our ‘best bets” posts are here, here and here.
• The titles, and more, of the 15 films shared by the New York and Vancouver Film Festivals may be found here.
• The VIFF’s calendar schedule is located here (you’ll need to put in the correct date).
• The search engine for VIFF 2013 films may be found here.

Enjoy your Festival, keep rested, and c’mon back to VanRamblings for more of our 32nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival buzz each day.

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

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