Friends and Lovers. Films reviewed: The Starling Girl, The Eight Mountains
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring Film Festival Season continues in Toronto, with Inside-Out opening next week, followed by TJFF in June.
But this week, I’m looking at two new dramas; one from the US, the other from Italy. There’s a fundamentalist young woman in Kentucky looking for love, and two men in the Italian alps looking for the fundamentals of friendship.
The Starling Girl
Wri/Dir: Laurel Parmet
Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is a 17-year-old girl in Kentucky, creative, pretty and burgeoning with sexual urges. She lives in the Holy Grace Christian community under the strict guidance of her parents and Pastor Taylor. She directs her energy into dance, moving her body to express her true feelings. But the dance troupe is supervised every step of the way and the slightest transgression — be it a visible bra strap or a hint of leg — is labeled selfish or sinful. Too many sins and you get shipped off to the dreaded King’s Valley — and they’ve all seen what happens to people sent there.
Pastor Taylor and her parents believe it’s time for “courtship” — 
that is Jen spending time with the boy they choose. They set it up but it does not go well. Ben Taylor is immature, gawky and socially inept. His idea of a good time is joking about chicken droppings. In any case, Jen has her eyes on the prize: Owen (Lewis Pullman). He’s charismatic and tanned, just back from Puerto Rico. He’s into meditation more than scripture. The only problem is he’s a Taylor, too, the preacher’s eldest son and he’s already married.
They decide to meet on the sly. There first few times are chaste and pure but the two of them are ready to explode. She’s the only real person he’s ever met, the only girl he feels comfortable with, he says. And Jen is infatuated with him. They start sending text messages or passing little notes to set up secret rendezvous. But there are no secrets in a community this small. Everything leaks out 
eventually. Is Jen being manipulated by an older, married man? Can Owen be trusted? And are they really in love?
The Starling Girl is a young woman’s coming-of-age drama about sexual frustration and awakening within a restrictive environment. This is filmmaker Laurel Parmet’s first feature and it’s a doozy. Filled with passion, deceit, secrets and lies, it’s a powerful look through a young woman’s eyes. I’ve never seen Eliza Scanlen before, and just assumed she was discovered in a Kentucky diner — but no, she’s yet another Australian actor bursting onto the American scene (and she’s totally convincing.)
I recommend this one.
The Eight Mountains
Wri/Dir: Felix van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch
(Based on the novel Le otto montagne by
Paolo Cognetti)
It’s the 1980s in Piedmont Italy. Pietro is an 11 year old boy who goes to school in Turin, but spends his summers with his parents in a tiny mountain village. There he meets Bruno, also 11, who herds long-horned goats and milks cows in the village. They become instant best friends, playing, fighting and swimming in the crystal clear waters of an isolated alpine lake. Bruno even gives Pietro a new name: Biero, which is Pietro, or stone, in the local dialect.
Though their moms are around, both of their fathers are rarely there: Bruno’s dad does construction work in Switzerland, while Pietro’s dad is a chemist at a huge plant in Turin. But he visits when he can — he loves the isolation and grandeur of the mountains, and wants to impart his love of them on his son. He takes him on hikes up the local peaks, recording each visit in a diary. Bruno soon joins their climbs (when he’s not apprenticing to make cheese) and their bonds strengthen each summer. But high school brings big changes — school is in the cities not the villages. And it costs money. Pietro’s parents offer to pay for Bruno to study in Turin. Pietro is offended by them taking his best friend away from the mountains — you’ll ruin him! he says. In any case, Bruno’s father won’t allow it. He puts him to work full-time laying bricks at the age of 13.
Pietro drifts apart from his best friend, and breaks all ties with his family to discover himself. 15 years later, he returns to the village and rekindles his friendship with Bruno. But have they drifted too far apart?
The Eight Mountains is a wonderful novelistic drama about friendship and life in the mountains. The story takes place over two decades, with each role played by three actors, child, adolescent and adult, though mostly as the third. Luca Marinelli (Martin Eden in Martin Eden) is excellent as an almost fragile writer who travels the world looking for his true home, and the eight mountains of the title. (He also narrates the story). Alessandro Borghi plays the 
adult Bruno — burly, bearded and gruff — but filled with self-doubt and conflicting emotions.
I don’t speak Italian, but I love the way the film plays with language and dialect, and communicates literary concepts and foreshadowing but without losing its deep, emotional pull. The film is by the Belgian team of Felix van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown) and Charlotte Vandermeersch, and it fits perfectly with their past work: it’s quite long (2 1/2 hours) with vivid natural scenery, a moving plot and American-style music. If you’re looking for a good, juicy drama about adult friendships, this is the one to see.
Great movie.
The Eight Mountains and The Starling Girl both open this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Exposing secrets. Films reviewed: John Wick: Chapter 4, The Five Devils, Ithaka
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies — an action film, a mysterious drama, and a documentary— from the US, France and Australia. There’s an assassin battling a secret organization, a little girl sticking her nose into hidden places, and a journalist jailed for bringing secret war crimes into the light.
John Wick: Chapter 4
Dir: Chad Stahelski
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a Belorussian assassin, under the control of a powerful, international cabal known as The High Table. He’s infamous for his relentless killing skills; he can wipe out an entire squadron with a just a pair of nunchucks. Wick wants out, but to do that he needs to be free. So he embarks on a complex series of tasks to complete before the Table frees him. In the meantime, The Marquis (Bill Skarsgård), the head honcho, wants him dead… so he gets Wick’s former best friend and partner to kill him.
Caine (Donnie Yen) is an expert martial arts fighter and shooter who happens to be blind. So Wick turns to another old friend, Shimazu 
(Sanada Hiroyuki) a hotelier in Osaka. Even though he could lose everything, he still agrees to hide Wick from the Marquis’ agents. Meanwhile, the marquis has put a multimillion dollar mark on Wick’s head, a reward that its steadily rising, letting loose an army of killers out for a quick buck, including a man with a dog known as the tracker 
(Shamier Anderson). Can Wick survive this army of killers? Or will this be his final showdown?
John Wick: Chapter 4 is nearly three hours of non-stop violence. The characters and storyline is strictly cookie-cutter, but the settings — in New York, Osaka, Paris, Berlin and Jordan — is vast and opulent. Every chamber has cathedral ceilings and gaudy rococo elegance. And the fight choreography is spectacularly orchestrated. The cast — including Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick — are fun to watch. No one will call this a great movie, but if you enjoy endless fight scenes with hundreds of extras whether among the writhing bodies of a Berlin nightclub or in a traffic jam around the Arc de Triomphe, John Wick 4 will satisfy.
The Five Devils (Les cinq diables)
Co-Wri/Dir: Léa Mysius
Vicki (Sally Dramé) is a bright young girl who lives in a small village in the French alps. Joanne, her mom (Adèle Exarchopoulos) teaches aqua fitness, while Jimmy, her dad (Moustapha Mbengue) is a fireman. But Vicki has no friends, and is constantly bullied at school, perhaps because she’s mixed-race in a mainly white town (her mom is white, her dad’s from Senegal.) Vicki has a unique skill no one else knows about: she can identify anything or anyone purely by its scent. If she picks up a leaf she instantly knows what kind of animal bit it, and its size, age, even its feelings. And she can recognize people at twenty paces, blindfolded, just by their smell. Vicki starts finding things, and like an alchemist, puts them into jars, carefully labelling each one.
But when a surprise visit by her aunt Julia, her father’s sister (Swala
Emati), things start to change. There’s something in Julia’s past that has turned the whole village against her. When Vicki discovers how to harness her power of smell to travel, temporarily, back in time, she finds that she may have played a role in Julia’s younger life. But can she influence what already happened?
The Five Devils is a very cool French mystery/drama with a hint of the supernatural and a sapphic twist. The alps may be majestic but they hide a sinister past, and a stultifyingly provincial and xenophobic culture. This is conveyed in the large, tacky murals and oddly dated architecture that pops up everywhere. The three female leads Exarchopoulos, Dramé and Emati are amazing (with full points on the Bechdel test). Mysius is an accomplished 
scriptwriter who has worked with such luminaries as Claire Denis and Jacques Audiard. You can tell. And an unexpected twist at the very end will have you leaving the theatre with an extra jolt.
I like this movie.
Ithaka
Wri/Dir: Ben Lawrence
Twenty years ago this month, US- and British-led forces invades Iraq under the pretence of finding Weapons of Mass Destruction supposedly threatening the west. Nothing is ever found and over 200,000 civilians are killed, 4 million displaced, and the entire middle east thrown into disarray, leading to the rise of fundamentalists like ISIS, unrest and civil war from which, 20 years later, it has yet to recover. In 2010, army specialistChelsea Manning anonymously releases a huge trove of secret military files to Wikileaks, a website founded specifically to expose things like war crimes and corruption, without endangering news sources and reporters who cover them.
It’s founded by Australian journalist and hactivist Julian Assange. That’s when Wikileaks catches the world’s attention by exposing, 
on video, the US military gunning down innocent civilians in Iraq in cold blood, including Reuters journalists. None of the perpetrators of these — and countless other war crimes — ever served time, but Manning is arrested and jailed, while Assange is forced to seek refuge in the Ecuador Embassy in London. He is afraid that travelling to Sweden for questioning will lead to him being extradited to the US. His fears are correct, and he is later jailed in Belmarsh, a maximum security prison in London, awaiting deportation to the US on charges of espionage. He remains there today.
Ithaka is a personal and intimate documentary about Assange in jail in London during the trial, and the events that led up to it. Using original interviews and contemporary news reports, it fills in the blanks you may have missed. It also reveals the CIA’s involvement, including plots to murder him. The doc follows two people: John Shipton, Assange’s dad, and Stella Moris, his wife and the mother of their two sons. Shipton is an Australian house builder and peace activist. Moris is the Johannesburg-born daughter of Swedish and 
Spanish parents who were active in the anti-Apartheid movement. She also serves as his lawyer. Assange is off camera, but his cel phone voice is often present.
For a man like Assange, who has done more to expose government and corporate corruption than almost any other journalist today, to be charged with espionage and threatened with life in prison is a travesty of justice. His suffering and deterioration in solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment. If you want to learn more about him, or to show your support, Ithaka is a good place to start.
John Wick Chapter 4 and The Five Devils open in Toronto this weekend; check you local listings. Ithaka is now playing at the Hot Docs cinema.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
60s, 70s, 80s. Films reviewed: Cocaine Bear, Jesus Revolution, Metronom
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies. There are spiritual revolutionaries in California in the 1960s, teenaged dissidents in Bucharest in the 1970s, and a crazed animal in Georgia in the 1980s.
Cocaine Bear
Dir: Elizabeth Banks
It looks like a typical day in 1985 in the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia. Two little kids are playing hooky, three skateboard-riding teenage delinquents are looking for some petty crime to commit, a pair of Scandinavian backpackers are on a hike, and a middle-aged forest ranger is dressed to impress a guy she wants to date. But everything changes when a prop-plane pilot drops a dozen duffel bags of uncut cocaine into the woods… and then promptly dies. Suddenly the supply chain is broken, and out-of-state traffickers looking to retrieve their supply — and the cops who want to nab them — all descend on the park at once. And here’s where the 
actual movie starts: a huge black bear sticks its nose into the duffel bag and emerges as a frantic, delirious, coke head, forever on the lookout for more snow to blow. Who will find the drugs — the cops, the gangsters, the delinquents, or the children? And who will not be eaten by the bear?
Cocaine Bear is a low-brow, high-concept comedy that’s basically 90 minutes of extreme-gore violence. I was a bit dubious at the beginning, but about half an hour in it started to get really funny. I know it’s stupid-funny, but it still made me laugh. The all-CGI bear is one of the main characters, but there’s a great assortment of humans, too, played by an all-star cast: Margo Martindale as the forest ranger, the late Ray Liotta was the gangster, Alden Ehrenreich as his diffident son, O’Shea 
Jackson Jr as his henchman, and Keri Russell as a mom searching for the two missing children. It’s hilariously directed by TV actor Elizabeth Banks. Cocaine Bear easily beats Snakes on a Plane and Sharknado as best movie based solely on its title. Supposedly inspired by true events (yeah, right) it has lots of room for ridiculous 80s haircuts, music and other gags to good effect. Stoner movies are a dime a dozen and half of the movies coming out of Hollywood are clearly made by cokeheads, but this may be the first comedy about cocaine I’ve ever seen. If you’re comfortable laughing at blood, gore and gratuitous violence, along with lots of base humour, I think you’ll love this one.
Jesus Revolution
Dir: Jon Erwin, Brent McCorkle
It’’s the late 1960s in California, where young people everywhere are tuning in, turning on, and dropping out. One of these kids is Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney), who attends a military academy but would rather be drawing cartoons. He lives in a trailer with his Mom, a glamorous but alcoholic barfly. He meets a pretty girl named Kathe hanging with the hippies outside a public high school, and decides that’s where he’d rather be. But Kathe is from an upper-class family whose parents frown on Greg. Meanwhile, Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer), a local pastor, wonders why no one is coming to his Calvary Chapel anymore. It’s because your a square, his 
daughter tells him. So she introduces him to a unique man she met at a psychedelic Happening. Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie) is a charismatic, touchy-feely type who talks like a hippie and looks like Jesus. He emerged from the sex-and-drug world of Haight Ashbury with a mission from God, and now wants to spread the gospel. Chuck Smith is less than impressed, but decides to give him a try.
Soon there are block-long lineups to hear what Lonnie — and Chuck — have to say. This includes Kathe and Greg, who barely survived a bad acid trip. Lonnie gives Greg a place to live and invites him to join the church. Calvary Chapel is attracting people from everywhere, 
culminating in mass baptisms in the Pacific ocean. But as their fame grows, so does the friction. The more moderate Chuck frowns on Lonnie’s in-your-face style — from faith-healing to his talk of being closer to God. Can Greg find a place in this world? Will Kathe’s family ever accept him? And is this a movement or just a flash in the pan?
Jesus Revolution is a retelling of the unexpected upsurge in grassroots Christianity among baby boomers in the 70s. The film is clearly aimed at evangelical church-goers, a subject in which I have absolutely no interest. Zero. Which is why I’m surprised how watchable this film is to a general audience. It’s not preachy — it shows, not tells. It’s well-acted with compelling characters and a surprisingly good story. No angels or miracles here, just regular — flawed but sympathetic — people. I think it’s because the Erwin Brothers (American Underdog, I Still Believe)have figured out how to make mainstream, faith-based movies that are actually good. The film is based on real people, so I was a bit surprised they never mention that Lonnie Frisbee was actually a gay man who later died of HIV AIDS. I guess it doesn’t fit the story they want to tell That said, if you’re involved in a church or a fan of spiritual films, this might be just what you’re looking for.
Metronom
Wri/Dir: Alexandru Belc
It’s 1972 in Bucharest, Romania. Ana and Sarin (Mara Bugarin, Serban Lazarovici) are a beautiful couple still in high school, and madly in love. They both come from “intellectual” families, who are given special privileges in Ceausescu’s communist regime. They go to an elite school together, and hope to pass their Baccalaureates to get into an equally good university. They meet in front of a WWII heroes monument dressed in stylish trench coats and school uniforms. So why is Ana crying? Sarin and his family are emigrating to Germany. That means they’re breaking up for good and will probably never see each other again. Ana is crushed — her world is broken. Which is why she has no interest in going to an afternoon party at a friend’s house, but changes her mind at the least minute. Her father, a law professor, is easy going, but her mother absolutely forbids it. So Ana sneaks out of the apartment and heads to the get-together. This is her last chance before he leaves to make out with Sarin and express her eternal love.
The party is centred around listening to music — Led Zepplin,
Hendrix, The Doors — as played on a radio show called Metronom on Radio Free Europe. Western music is underground, subversive and illicit. They decide to write a letter to the show and pass it on to a French journalist. But two bad things happened. When they make love behind a closed door, Sarin won’t say he loves her. And the party gets raided by the secret police and all the kids are arrested and forced to write confessions. But Ana is so caught up in her relationship she barely notices the interrogation she has landed up in. Who ratted them out to the authorities? And what will happen to Ana?
Metronom is a passionate story of young love in the 1970s under the omnipresent gaze of an authoritarian government. It’s a coming of age story, about heartbreak and the loss of innocence as the real world reveals its ugly face.
If you’ve never seen a Romanian film before (such as Întregalde, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Poppy Field, The Whistlers, The Fixer, One Floor Below), this is a good place to start. They all have this feeling of tension, corruption, mistrust and unease, whether they’re set during Ceaucescu’s reign or long after his fall. This one also has hot sex, good music, stark cinematography, and terrific acting, especially Mara Bugarin as Ana. It manages to be a thriller, a romance and a coming-of-age story, all at once.
This is a good one.
Metronom is now playing a the TIFF Bell Lightbox; Cocaine Bear and Jesus Revolution open nationwide this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
From India to Iceland. Films reviewed: To Kill a Tiger, Godland
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at two new movies now playing in Toronto: a documentary and an historical drama. There’s an underdog in India standing up to her oppressors; and a Dane in Iceland cowering in fright.
To Kill a Tiger
Wri/Dir: Nisha Pahuja
(I interviewed Nisha here, in 2012)
Ranjit is a poor farmer in a rural village in the Bero district of Jharkhand, in Eastern India. Together with his wife, they are raising his beloved children, whom they hope will advance to a better life through education. But everything changed late one night, after a wedding party. Their oldest, a 13-year-old girl. is attacked and brutally gang raped by men from the village. When their parents found out what happened, they rushed her to the police and eventually the men are arrested. But the authorities decided the proper response to this is for a 13-year-old girl — their beloved daughter! — to marry one of her rapists. It’s a hellish proposition, and the entire family rejected it. And with the help of an NGO, they 
decide to press charges and put the men on trial. She has the full support of her father, and agrees to testify in court. This is almost unheard of in India, and the trial became a cause celebre, with people across the country awaiting its verdict.
But the process is far from favourable. The family receives death threats, while local officials blame the victim for her attackers’ crimes. They are shunned in their home village, and strongly pressured to drop it. Can they go through with the trial? Will the girl testify? And do they have any chance of winning?
To Kill A Tiger is an NFB documentary about a young girl and her supportive family who question authority from within a strictly hierarchical society. Although the film estimates a woman is raped in India every 20 minutes, few cases are reported and fewer still are vindicated in trial. The documentary covers the family in their home, along with their many supporters — lawyers, NGOs, civil rights activists — and their detractors, including her unrepentant alleged attackers. The entire film was shot in India in the days leading up to around the trial, in the places where it was happening.
This strong documentary stands behind underdogs in their fight against the system, and provides a sliver of hope amidst very grave circumstances.
Godland
Wri/Dir: Hlynur Pálmason
It’s the late 19th Century in Denmark. Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) is an earnest young priest with a seemingly simple mission: to travel to a Danish colony in southeastern Iceland, build a church there before winter comes, and then start preaching. But beware, warns his supercilious superior, Iceland is not what you expect it to be. They may look sort of like us, but they speak a different language, they believe in different things, and they are primitive in their ways, not civilized like us Europeans. And the landscape though 
beautiful is dangerous and treacherous, full of erupting volcanoes, flooding rivers and steep rocks. Not to be trifled with.
Ignoring him, Lucas sets out on his carefree journey, carrying his camera equipment, books and a giant cross. There’s also a large entourage of Icelandic workers. He takes an instant dislike toward Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurðsson) an older man who speaks no Danish. But he soon makes friends and bonds with his translator (Hilmar Guðjónsson), the only person he can talk with. But when things start to go wrong and the translator is killed, Lucas sinks into a deep melancholy. His depression grows deeper even as his anger, directed mainly at Ragnar, starts to swell. Can he survive until they reach the town and build the church? And will he be a suitable leader of the congregation?
Godland is an impressionistic historical drama about a clash of cultures. It follows a Danish priest’s journey into his own private heart of darkness. The film is full of love, romance, rivalry and revenge, as experienced by a group of strange and quirky characters. There is so much to love about this movie: they ride small horses with beautiful manes straight out of My Little Pony. Poetry, sagas, story-telling and Iceland’s oral history are still living things, part of everyday use, not something hidden away in dusty books. And around any twist in the trail. they might run into a breathtaking waterfall, a crackling glacier or an erupting volcano. Lucas photographs the people he’s travelling with, posing them before ethereal land- and seascapes. 
The pace is slow, but still dramatic: it takes the time to show the priest applying egg whites and silver to a pane of glass to take one of his wet plate photos. In real life a lost cache of these pictures was found there a century later — and that’s what inspired this film. The entire movie is shot to look like those photos, in an almost square shape with softly rounded corners.
And like any good Nordic film, Godland combines a dark storyline with a stunning aesthetic.
I recommend this movie.
To Kill a Tiger is now playing in Toronto at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema, and Godland at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Oscar contenders, 2023. Films reviewed: Saint Omer, The Son, Living
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three potential Oscar contenders opening this weekend. There’s a writer in Paris attending a trial, a bureaucrat in London whose life is a trial, and a Dad dealing with the trials and tribulations of a mentally ill son.
Saint Omer
Wri/Dir: Alice Diop
It’s the early 2000s in a Parisian suburb. Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda) is on trial for murder. She admits to leaving the infant on a beach to be washed away with the tides one moonlit night, but why she did it is not so simple. She’s a Senegalese-French woman from Dakar, in Paris as a student. She is beautiful, articulate, poised and intelligent; not your usual murder suspect. As her mother (Salimata Kamate) told her, education and politesse are the two most important traits. But after a series of events she ends up living in a small apartment as a grey-haired, married man’s mistress — no longer in university, with no friends, no job, no future. And virtually no one knows she was pregnant nor that she gave birth at home. She existed in a strange limbo world.
All of this is taken in by Rama (Kayije Kagame) a novelist and 
university prof in Paris. She is following the trial in person, for a new book she’s writing about Medea. Like Laurence, she’s a French intellectual, and a black woman of West African background. More than that, she’s estranged from her mother and is in her first trimester of pregnancy. In a sea of white faces in the courtroom, she feels both a connection and a revulsion toward Laurence. Could this be me on trial? she wonders. And will I be a fit mother?
Saint Omer is a devastatingly powerful courtroom drama as seen through an observer’s eyes. It’s the opposite of a Law & Order episode — no smoking guns or pot twists. Rather it’s Laurence’s retelling of her story before judge and jury Rama’s reactions that carries all the power. It’s intentionally filled with subtle ambiguity so you’re never quite sure whether Laurence is lying and being coached to do so, or if she’s completely sincere. With women holding most of the key roles — including the judge and the defence council — it strips away some misconceptions. The acting (by actress Malanda and artist/performer Kagame) is superb, and the filmmaking amazing. This is documentary filmmaker Alice Drop’s first drama. Somehow, she takes the drab wooden panels of a classroom and a courtroom and turns them into something pulsing with emotion.
This is a great movie.
The Son
Wri/Dir: Florian Zeller
Beth and Peter (Vanessa Kirby, Hugh Jackman) are a newly married, upper-middle class couple with a new baby. All I going well until they get an unexpected knock on the door. His teenaged son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) says he can’t take living his mom anymore (Laura Dern) a full-time nurse whom Peter divorced and abandoned a few years earlier. What a dilemma! He can’t turn away his own flesh and blood, can he? But Nicholas is difficult to live with. It seems he stopped going to school months ago — without telling his parents. And Beth finds him scary. What if he does something to our baby— how can I trust him? So they check him into a psych ward without his consent. But what can they do in the long run with this troublesome teen?
The Son is an overwrought melodrama about divorced parents forced to care for their troubled son. It deals with anguish, anger and regret but only from the parents’ perspective, never from the son’s. He’s just a pain in the ass… and possibly a threat! This movie falls in that sub-genre of sympathetic parents forced to deal with sons who “selfishly” choose to become drug addicts or mental ill. How dare they! Despite what the parents try, those bad sons are criminals and liars at heart who can never be trusted. This dreadful collection of 
never-watch movies includes Beautiful Boy, with Timothy Chalamet and Ben is Back, starring Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges. This one has equal star power, and is just as hard to watch. It’s especially disappointing because it’s Florian Zeller’s follow-up to The Father a few years back about an elderly man slipping into dementia (Anthony Hopkins, who also appears in this film), as its unreliable narrator. But don’t be fooled. The Son has no redeeming features and is truly one of the worst movies of 2022.
Living
Wri/Dir: Oliver Hermanus
It’s Londin in the 1950s. Williams (Bill Nighy) is a mundane municipal bureaucrat, the head of public works at County Hall. He spends most of his time at his desk — along with his subordinates Rusbridger, Middleton and Hart — keeping busy by ignoring piles of files and requests. Whenever troublesome locals appear, like a group of mothers requesting they build a tiny playground in a vacant lot, they’re quickly disposed of by sending them to another department in the endless bureaucratic labyrinth of city hall. The newly-hired Wakeling is quickly discouraged from working too hard — an empty inbox means you’re doing something wrong. The sole woman, Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), is thinking of quitting to take a managerial job at a local restaurant. Since his wife died, 
Williams has lived a humdrum existence sharing his home with his adult son and daughter-in- law. But everything changes when his doctor brings him some terrible `news: incurable cancer, 6 months left to live. Suddenly everything takes on new meaning as he decides to start enjoying life and making things better for others. But is it too late?
Living is a period drama about life in post-war London. It captures the spark that can be reawakened in even the most humdrum person’s existence. It follows the night Williams spends in the demimonde led by an alcoholic bohemian he meets in a cafe; the days spent helping Margaret, for the chance to share in her youth and vitaity; and a project he hoped to complete in his final days.
I approached this movie with trepidation, because it’s a remake of Kurosawa’s Ikiru, one of my favourite movies of all time, which I didn’t want to see ruined. Happily, Living it is wonderful film in its own right. Maybe only a writer like UK novelist Kazuo Ishiguro could transport a story from Tokyo to London, while staying true to its original meaning and structure, even while giving this very Japanese film a distinctly English feel. Bill Nighy (who usually plays silly characters in crap movies) is wonderfully understated in this one. And South African director Oliver Hermanus, who brought us the great Moffie, again puts his all into the film he’s making.
I recommend this movie.
Living, Saint Omer, and The Son all open this weekend in Toronto, with the latter two playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Talking, listening, fighting back. Films reviewed: No Bears, Puss in Boots, Women Talking
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s holiday time with lots of new movies for people of all ages. This week I’m looking at three new movies opening on Christmas weekend. There are women in a barn, talking; a movie director in a village, listening; and a cat in a hat, fighting.
No Bears
Wri/Dir: Jafar Panahi
Jafar Panahi is an Iranian filmmaker from Tehran. His current project is about a glamorous middle-aged couple trying to escape to freedom in Europe. But Panahi is forbidden by law from making movies or leaving the country. So he’s doing the next best thing: directing his film in long-distance using his cellphone and laptop. It’s being shot in a picturesque city in Turkey, while he’s renting an apartment in a tiny Azerbaijani village in Iran. It’s close to the border an area rife with black market smugglers. Panahi can speak some Azeri but is unfamiliar with local traditions. So he likes talking pictures of the locals. And here’s where he runs into trouble.
A young couple wants to get married and leave the village. But the woman was promised to another man at birth. Now everyone thinks Panahi caught the young couple in a photograph. The couple want him to destroy the photo, while the groom’s family want a copy to prove her dishonour. Meanwhile, across the border, another crisis is threatening the film movie. As he gets pulled deeper and deeper into the world of local politics and feuds, his work — and possibly his life — is at risk. Will he ever finish his film? And what will happen to the two couples — the actor-lovers in Turkey and secret lovers back home?
No Bears is a neorealist movie about making a film, the film 
he’s making, and how real life gets in the way. It’s about honour, revenge and identity. It also exposes the image of “the director as a dispassionate observer and documentarian” as a myth. Panahi’s very presence in a small village disrupts their lives and leads to unforeseen consequences. He plays himself, who in real life is forbidden from making films — accused of propaganda against the system. Any movie that’s against the system is one I want to watch. But this means it was shot openly in Turkey but secretly in Iran. No Bears is a clever, humorous and complex film with an unexpected conclusion. I liked this one.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Co-Dir: Joel Crawford, Januel Mercado
Puss in Boots is a cat in a hat who wears boots, and carries a sword. He’s known for both his fencing skills and his rapier-like wit. He lives a fairytale life — literally. He exists in a world where those stories are real. He’s both a hero and an outlaw, sought by bounty-hunters everywhere. But as a cat with nine lives he has no fear of death and will fight monsters and villains, alike. Until one day his doctor tells him he’d better slow down because he’s on his last life. If he is killed again, that’s the end, no more Puss in Boots. So he reluctantly decides to retire. He gives up his identity, and becomes an ordinary orange cat named Pickles in a home for abandoned cats. Now he has to use a litter box, eat cat chow and say “meow”. How humiliating! But his past catches up to him with some surprise visitors: Kitty Softpaws, another outlaw he left standing at the altar; and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They all want him to help find a map to a fallen star that can grant a wish. Goldilocks wants a proper family, Kitty is looking for her future, and Puss in Boots wants his 9 lives back. Accompanied by a little dog named Perro he sets out to steal the map from the evil Little Jack 
Horner (who is now quite big and bakes pies for living). But he must fight off his rivals, journey through a mystical forest, and find the magic star if he wants to stay alive. And he is being pursued by a truly scary villain, the Big Bad Wolf, a huge killer carrying a sickle in each hand.
Puss in Boots is a kids’ cartoon comedy set in the world of Shrek, where nursery rhymes and fairytales coexist with Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz. It’s somehow simultaneously a spaghetti western and medieval Europe. It features the voices of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Florence Pugh. What’s good about it? I’ll watch any cartoon, especially one with cool psychedelic images. This one has a few funny bits, along with a neat journey-adventure story. On the negative side, it’s not very funny, the lines are predictable and the story is both unoriginal and forgettable. And I’m not sure why they switch to two-dimensional jerky animation whenever there’s a fight scene. But I still enjoyed it, even if it’s just glowing bright colours on a giant screen.
Women Talking
Dir: Sarah Polley
It’s summertime at an Anabaptist colony somewhere in the US. It’s 2010, but it could be 1910; forget about cel phones and computers. There are no cars, radios, no electric lights — they still use lanterns. Even more unusual, there are no men around, only women and kids. What’s going on?
One of the women woke up in the middle of the night to find a man physically attacking her. She fought him off and beat him with a stick. Suddenly everything made sense. Countless women in the colony had woken up in the past with bruises and blood, but up till now, the men had insisted out was just a dream, her imagination or the work of Satan. Turns out the men have been raping women for years now and denying it, using cow tranquilizers. Now they are at the police station baling out one of their attackers. So all the women face an enormous decision: should they stay and fight back? Or should they just pack up the kids and go, leaving the place forever?
They designate the women and girls from three families to decide for all of them. Now they’re gathered in a barn to debate the issues and make the big decision. And one man, a school teacher named August — not part of the colony; his family was excommunicated — is there to record it all on paper; the 
women were never taught to read or write. What will their decision be?
Women Talking is a movie about women talking, but it is much deeper than that. It’s a devastating story, a scathing indictment of endemic physical and sexual violence against women in their own homes. Though it’s never shown on the screen, nor are its perpetrators, its results are always apparent. One woman has a scar on her face, one woman is mysteriously pregnant, others have missing teeth or black eyes, and another has panic attacks, seemingly for no reason. And now they’re really angry, 
not just for the violence, but because they’ve been lied to for so many years. There’s a spontaneous wellspring of grassroots feminism suddenly bursting loose.
The storytelling is very simple — it sticks to the barn, the fields, their houses and horses and buggies; it’s all they’ve experienced. At the same time, perhaps because they can’t write, they are amazingly eloquent speakers. It’s based on the novel by Canadian author Miriam Toewes who grew up in a Mennonite community. (The film never specifies their denomination or location, giving it a timeless, universal feeling.) It provides an internal view of life in the colony, with different opinions expressed passionately by each character. And it’s very well-acted by an ensemble cast, including Rooney Mara, Jesse Buckley, Claire Foy, Frances McDormand, Sheila McCarthy, Ben Whishaw. And despite the grave topic, the movie itself is more fulfilling than depressing. I’ve seen it twice, and appreciated it much more the second time — Women Talking is a subtle movie that deserves your attention.
Puss n Boots: The Last Wish, No Bears and Women Talking, all opened this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
A donkey and a wolf. Films reviewed: Eo, She Said
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Fall Film Festival Season continues in Toronto with the EU film festival, offering free screenings from across Europe from now till Dec 2 at the Alliance Française. The Ekran film festival is also on now, showing the latest Polish movies at the Revue Cinema on Roncevalles; and Blood in the Snow or B.I.T.S. features made-in-Canada horror movies next week at the Elizabeth Bader Theatre from November 24-26th.
But this week I’m looking at two new movies about animals. There’s a defenceless donkey in Poland, and a dangerous wolf in Hollywood.
EO
Co-Wri/Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski
Eo is an adorable miniature donkey who works at a one-ring circus. He is lovingly cared for by a woman dressed in red, who performs with him on stage. But when animal rights activists close the circus down, Eo finds himself pulling a wooden cart full of scrap metal at a junk yard. Later he is trucked off to an elegant estate that raises championship horses. From there he’s sold to a farmer, wanders through a wolf-filled forest on his own, and fights off dangerous football hooligans. His journeys take him across Europe, among the rich and poor, the kind and cruel, but will he ever be reunited with his long lost love?
Eo is an incredibly beautiful and tender film about an adorable 
donkey and the people — both good and bad — he encounters. Oe never speaks, but conveys his emotions through tear-filled eyes, cuddling gestures and loud angry wails. This is not a cutesy animal movie, it’s about adult emotions — like lust, betrayal, cruelty and violence. Stunningly cinematic, the film tells its story in an impressionistic manner, as seen through a donkey’s eyes. Periodically the entire screen is blood red; but there are also breathtaking, panoramic views of palazzi in Italy, manors in Poland, magnificent white horses, ancient, arched bridges, 
green fields, flowing rivers, and dark skies: gorgeous images that can only be appreciated on a big screen. There’s very little dialogue, in Polish, English, French and Italian, with most of the meaning conveyed visually. There are cameo appearances by actors like Isabelle Huppert, but Eo (and the donkeys who play him) is the real star.
Jerzy Skolimowski, who attended the Łódź Film School, is not as well known as fellow alumni Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieślowski, but I think his films are just as amazing, with a dream-like quality.
OE must not be missed.
She Said
Dir: Maria Schrader
It’s 2015, in New York City. Meghan Twohey and Jodi Kantor are two investigative reporters within the juggernaut of that Gray Lady, the New York Times. Meghan (Grey Mulligan) is following a string of women all of whom say the Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, sexually harassed them in the past. But they are all afraid to come forward in public. When she finally does get a woman willing to reveal her name in print, she suffers terribly, sent packages of human excrement in the mail, while Meghan gets death threats. So she takes maternal leave to care for her first baby.
Meanwhile, cub reporter Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), also married with two young kids, is pursuing a very different story. Hollywood actress Rose McGowan is hinting that someone at Miramax, that extraordinarily successful independent movie studio, sexually harassed her in the past. Jodi wants to find out whodunnit — Rose isn’t saying — and to get her to commit to details on the record. So she turns to Meghan for help. How do I get women to talk? The two of them join forces, doing extensive research stretching back decades, using legal documents, withdrawn lawsuits, secret payments, and 
clandestine Non-disclosure agreements. They discover there are women as far away as London and Hong Kong who suffered from horrible incidents of bullying, abuse, and sexual assault, all of which were later covered up. And the arrows pointed toward one man: Harvey Weinstein. Can the reporters get even one woman to commit using her name in an article against the formidable and frightening Hollywood powerbroker? Or will the paper be forced to retract it’s allegations?
She Said is a fascinating retelling of two journalists pursuing a major story just a few years ago. It takes us deep into the weeds of investigative journalism. And it’s told like a police procedural, as the journalists slowly uncover the facts. The thing is, computer screens and cel phones do not make for good cinema. Hollywood seems to churn out these newsroom dramas every couple years, including Spotlight about the Boston Globe’s revelation of pedophile priests, and The Post about the Washington Post and the Pentagon Papers. This is one is about the New York Times. So we sit through lots of dull editorial meetings.
Luckily, most of the story takes us out of the office and into the real world, with the reporters knocking on doors and approaching victims who haven’t spoken of the incidents for 30 years. This — and the victims’ own stories, always spoken verbally, never reenacted— is where it gets interesting and moving. The film faces problems telling a history that’s still happening (Although convicted and in prison, Weinstein has yet to be tried for many other alleged crimes.) And it’s all about real, living people, so it runs the risk of anodyne (if truthful) portrayals of the characters. Luckily the acting is terrific, and the characters — not just the reporters, but the sources — are believable. And Maria Schrader is an excellent German director (she did last year’s I’m Your Man), who knows how to avoid those excessive blubbery, gushing “Hollywood moments” that ruin so many movies. She Said might not be a great movie, but it is the first one about this major issue, and projects it on a wider screen. As they keep saying in the movie, it’s not about one man, it’s about an entire system that protects and supports the powerful and persecutes their victims.
EO is playing tonight at Ekran, Toronto’s Polish film festival, and opens next Friday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. She Said starts this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Lost Souls. Films reviewed: Apples, Moloch, Passengers of the Night
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Nunavut day, so what better time is there to catch up on Inuit movies. Slash/Back, a brand-new movie about aliens in a small arctic town, is playing right now. The Grizzlies is a feel-good film about a high school lacrosse team. And if you’ve never seen Zacharias Kunuk’s movies — including The Journals of Knud Rasmussen and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner — well… you’d better.
But this week I’m looking at three new European movies — from Greece, the Netherlands and France — about lost souls. There’s a lonely guy in Athens who loses his memory in a pandemic; a divorced mom in Paris who seeks solace in late night talk radio; and a widowed mom in the Netherlands who is haunted by the lost souls… in a peat-moss bog.
Apples
Wri/Dir: Christos Nikou
Aris (Aris Servetalis) lives by himself in Athens, Greece. One day while going for a walk he forgets where he lives. Also his family, his identity, even his first name. He has acute amnesia, the symptom of a strange pandemic, sweeping across the planet. He’s taken to hospital, with the hope a family member will arrive to identify him. But no one comes. About the only thing he knows is he likes apples. The hospital arranges for him to move into an apartment, where they hope he can regain his memory, or at least achieve some level of self worth and identity. To achieve this they put him into an experimental program. He’s given a series of mundane tasks, all of which he is expected to record, using a polaroid camera. Ride a bike, go to a movie, attend a party, drink alcohol, meet a new friend. It also includes things like picking up a woman in a bar (he accidentally goes to a strip bar with embarrassing consequences) But during his recovery, while viewing the Texas Chainsaw 
Massacre, he encounters another alienated, memory-deficient person.
Anna (Sofia Georgovasili) is clearly on the same program. Two is better than one, so they begin to see one another, if in a detached, alienated way. But as time progresses, Aris begins to remember things, including sad memories he wants to suppress. Will Anna be his soul mate? Will he ever find his original home? And is there any meaning to his life?
Apples is a satirical look at modern urban alienation in a time of pandemic. Interestingly, this film was completed in 2019 BC, (before Covid). But 
somehow it captures the mundane, seemingly meaningless medical obsessions, the injections, the tests, the isolation, loneliness and self-doubt that we all experienced over the past two years.
Writer-director Christos Nikou worked with the now famous Yorgos Lanthimos, on his earliest film, Dogtooth, and like that movie, it’s funny, weird and extremely awkward, with adults behaving like children, and people blindly obeying seemingly nonsensical rules. It takes place in the present day but it’s filled with obsolete gadgets like polaroid cameras, and cassette tape players not a cel phone or a laptop in sight. Aris Servetalis is excellent as the main character, who fits perfectly within the film’s minimalist feel.
I like this one.
Moloch
Co-Wri/Dir: Nico van den Brink
Betriek (Sallie Harmsen) is a woman in her thirties who lives in an isolated home with her parents and her young daughter, in northern Netherlands. Her home is in a forest, surrounded by peat moss bogs. Her daughter goes to public school but Betriek likes the isolation — she thinks her family is cursed so it’s best to keep to herself. Easier said than done. Especially when a strange man appears in her living room! He can’t stop it, he says, they won’t let him! And his voice seems to be an unworldly chorus of a thousand souls. And then he tries to kill them all. Turns out he worked at a nearby archaeological dig, headed by Jonas (Alexandre Willaume) a Danish man.
Peat moss is a natural preservative and they’re digging up mummified bodies from ancient times. And when they examine them, they discover they are all victims of the same sort of ancient ritual sacrifice to some primeval god. By disturbing the graves they may have let loose ancient demons, 
possessing her friends and family. Meanwhile, her mother is going through another difficult period with her brain — is it related? Her father says they’d better leave the place and never come back. And when Betriek encounters strange visions of a little girl sending her a message, she realizes things are very wrong. Will Jonas ever believe there’s something evil going on? Can Betriek break her family’s curse? Will they fall in love? And together can they fight off an ancient evil god?
Moloch is an excellent Dutch horror movie about life in a remote village built over secrets that never should have been disturbed. It sounds like a simple story, but actually it’s a multi-layered drama. The film even incorporates a school Christmas pageant where small children innocently reenact an ancient pagan tribute even while mayhem is happening outside. The movie’s in Dutch, but because of the multiplicity of languages, much of the dialogue is in English. And remarkable for a horror movie, the cinematography is gorgeous, as warm and grainy as any 70s Hollywood movie. I liked this one, too.
Passengers of the Night
Dir: Mikhaël Hers
It’s the mid-1980s in Paris. Elisabeth (Charlotte Gainsbourg) lives with her two teenaged kids high up in an apartment tower. Her daughter Judith, is outspoken and into politics, while her son Matthias (Quito Rayon- Richter) is more introspective — he gets in trouble for writing poems in history class. The dad, though, is nowhere to be seen. He moved in with his girlfriend and pays no child support. So Elisabeth is forced to search for a job to keep her family afloat. She finds solace listening to a late-night radio talk show, and applies to work there. She lands a job at the switchboard vetting callers and guests for the host, Vanda (Emmanuelle Béart). She invites a young woman to the show based on a touching letter she wrote. Tallulah (Noée Abita) is 18 but has lived on the streets of Paris for years, sleeping under bridges and in squats. She has raven hair, pale skin and doe eyes.
Elisabeth can’t stand the thought of her sleeping in the rough, so she invites Tallulah to stay, temporarily, in a spare room tucked away far above their apartment. She wants to keep her separate from her kids, but they soon meet up. She’s street smart, and teaches them how to live on nothing and tricks like how to get into a movie theatre without a ticket. Matthias is smitten by her and longs to take it further. But after a late night tryst, she flees
the apartment and disappears, leaving the family shocked and saddened. Four years later, things have changed. The kids are growing up, Elisabeth has gained self-confidence and she has a day job and a much younger boyfriend named Hugo. But when her ex says he’s selling the home, it’s time for major changes. That’s when Tallulah reappears again at their door in a bad state. Can Elisabeth save Tallulah from her spiral into darkness? And what will the future bring?
Passengers of the Night is a beautiful and heartfelt look at a Parisian family navigating its way through unexpected shifts in their lives, and how a visitor can change everything. The film is set in the 80s (from 1981 through 1988), not just the costumes, music, and Talulah’s big hair but also the tumultuous political and social changes from that era. And it’s punctuated by views of Paris from that era — high-rises, sunsets and views through commuter train windows — shot on a narrower bias, to give it a realistic feel. While more gentle than a sob story, it still brings tears to your eyes.
Passengers of the Night and Apples are both playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. And Moloch is now streaming on Shudder.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Hot Docs 22! Films reviewed: Hunting in Packs, Midwives PLUS other docs to look out for
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Hotdocs, Canada’s International Documentary Festival is on now, showing more than 200 selected movies, many having their world premier. Filmmakers are now in Toronto from all around the world, and so are many of the films subjects. And as always daytime screenings are free for students and seniors: go to hotdocs.ca for details and restrictions.
And — unlike with mainstream motion pictures — a large number of the directors are women. This year they’re featuring films by the legendary documentarians Janis Cole and Holly Dale, whose films P4W: Prison for Women and Hookers on Davie (about sex workers in Vancouver) are not to be missed. I saw both of these many years ago, and they’re unforgettable.
This week I’m looking at two more movies — both directed by and about women — playing at hotdocs. There are midwives in Myanmar and politicos in Parliaments and Congress.
But before that I’m talking about some of the movies playing at Hotdocs that I haven’t seen yet but look like they’re worth checking out
Movies at Hotdocs.
One is Jennifer Baichwal’s newest doc Into the Weeds. It’s about a groundskeeper who stood up to the agro-chemical giant Monsanto when he (and tens of thousands of others) got sick after using the herbicide Roundup. Baichwal has won numerous awards for her breathtakingly beautiful documentaries like Manufactured Landscapes and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, so I’m sure this one is worth seeing too.
Reg Harkema has a new documentary all about the Kids in the Hall, the great Toronto comedy group. They’re getting back together, and three of them — Scott Thompson, Bruce McCulloch, and Mark McKinney — will be at Hotdocs premier in person. Can’t wait to see that.
Another celeb in town is Abigail Disney (of the Disney family) who is now a social activist and filmmaker, 
She co-directed The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales, which talks about the great class divide and economic inequality in the US, using her own family as the starting point.
Atomic Hope: Inside the Pro-Nuclear Movement talks with scientists campaigning for nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels in slowing climate change. This sounds very interesting.
In the Eye of the Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis is about the former Finance Minister of Greece who fought against the brutal austerity measures imposed by European banks.
Riotsville, USA tells the true story of two fake towns built in the 1960s to train military troops to crack down on demonstrations and civil disobedience.
On a lighter note, Her Scents of Pu Er looks at the first female tea master in China’s history, who shares the secrets of that fragrant and much sought after tea. And Patty vs Patty tells the bizarre true story of Toronto city hall trying to force sellers of Jamaican beef patties to call them something else, because 
they’re not hamburger patties. This actually happened.
All of these movies are playing at Hotdocs, right now.
Hunting in Packs
Dir: Chloe Sosa-Sims
Michelle Rempel is a conservative MP from Calgary, who is an ardent supporter of building more pipelines and encouraging the fossil fuel industry. Jess Philips is an MP from Birmingham from the Labour Party. An ardent feminist, she opposes the leftist Jeremy Corbyn, veering toward Keir Starmer on the party’s centre-right. And Pramila Jayapal is a congresswoman from Seattle. Born in Chennai, India, she is a longtime advocate for immigrant rights and represents the progressive wing of the
Democratic Party. So what do these three very different people have in common? They’re all outspoken politicians with firm beliefs… who are also women.
Hunting in Packs is a great, behind-the-scenes look at women in politics over the course of a few years, and the particular abuse they face, up to and including recent elections. It takes you to political “war rooms”, TV appearance, door-to-door canvassing, and the daily drudgery of a politician’s life. It shows them dealing with hecklers and potentially violent protesters (Jess Philips 
brings up the terrible murder of another Labour MP, Jo Cox, by a politically motivated killer, just a few years ago.) It also reveals some hidden aspects of these women’s personalities. Rempel can curse a blue streak that would make a sailor blush. Philips keeps her cool passing in-your-face protesters. And Jayapal, while the most polished of the three, sticks to her guns and faces down abusive comments on the floor of the House. And regardless of your politics, the three women are each likeable in her own way. This is an entertaining look at the game of politics in the US, UK and Canada.
Midwives
Dir: Hnin Ei Hlaing (Snow)
Hla is an established midwife in Rakhine state in western Myanmar, where she functions as the local doctor, caring for women, not just when they’re giving birth. She notices that a lot of women in her village receive no medical care at all, with some forced to give birth, alone, in the middle of their fields. This is unheard of. So Hla decides to hire a young woman named Nyo Nyo as her apprentice so she can care for this underserved population.
Seems pretty straightforward, right?
No!
Rakhine is a deeply troubled area with rebels fighting the central government, as well as ethnic strife within. This is where a million Rohingya were forced to flee to squalid refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh following brutal violence, rape and arson directed against them. And what do we have here? Hla (Rakhine and Buddhist) hiring Nyo Nyo (Rohingya and 
Muslim) as her apprentice. And nationalists, soldiers, and rebels are not happy about this. Can two very different women work together as midwives? Or will ethnic strife tear their arrangement apart?
Midwives is a fascinating, observational-style documentary that gives us a glimpse of two women as out follows them over several years. It shows the raw and rough aspects of their lives — including an actual childbirth on camera — as Nyo Nyo gradually learns her profession. It also exposes the casual racism — 
from rude, everyday comments about Nyo Nyo’s darker skin, to pop songs on the radio inciting violence against the Rohingya, that shapes the attitudes in that region. All this set against a tumultuous political climate, with a violent military that eventually overthrows the democratically elected government. It’s not unusual to hear missiles and bombs exploding outside the village. But it also gives us an intimate view of the two women and their families as they navigate their uncertain futures, through assimilation, learning languages, and opening a new business. You learn to love and laugh with these two unusual women. It gives an honest and realistic look at this troubled area, as rarely seen on film.
Midwives and Hunting in Packs are both premiering at hotdocs. Go to hotdocs.ca for tickets.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Balkan stories. Films reviewed: You Won’t Be Alone, Întregalde, The White Fortress
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Movie theatres are finally open again, for real. I mean munching-popcorn-and-seeing-silly-movies-on -the-big-screen real. I went to a preview of The Lost City, sort of a remake of the 80s hit Romancing the Stone, starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. It’s totally goofy, but I really liked seeing a movie I could watch and enjoy without my critical eye. It’s what I call a popcorn movie.
This week we’re escaping to the Balkans, for three stories set in Romania, Macedonia and Bosnia–Herzegovina. There are three do-gooders stuck in the mud, two teenagers falling in love, and one girl promised to an evil witch on her 16th birthday.
You Won’t Be Alone
Wri/Dir: Goran Stolevski
It’s 19th century Macedonia, a time when people still believed in witches and folklore. In particular there’s a wolf-like witch who terrorizes a village by devouring their babies. One woman dares to talk back. She appeals to Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca) a hideously ugly woman covered in scars, not to killer her infant. In exchange she can have her when she’s a young woman, someone to take care of her in her old age. The witch agrees, but first marks her and takes away her tongue. But the next 16 years are neither childhood nor girlhood. Mother keeps her isolated in a deep dark cave, hoping the witch will never find her. But of course she does and takes her away. Says the witch — this world is a terrible place, peopled by liars and killers. So you must learn to kill. But the girl is overwhelmed by the beauty of blue skies and green fields. She loves living, from rabbits to fish, and cherishes them all. IN frustration the witch sets her free, vowing she will soon learn how awful people are. Turns out the watch is partly right — people can be cruel. And learn she does. Her long claws frighten them until she realizes she can change her appearance… but first she must find someone who just died, be they male or female, young or old, and put their beating heart into her chest. Thus begins her search for love in this hideous and wondrous world.
You Won’t Be Alone is a highly impressionistic retelling of a 
classic folktale, filled with sex, nudity, violence. The characters rarely speak, rather a constant voiceover tells the girl’s thoughts using childlike stilted words. The camera drifts in and out, changing point of view from human to witch to wolf. The film was shot in Serbia with an international cast, including the Swedish Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, and Lamb), The French Carloto Cotta (Diamantino) and many others. But don’t expect a traditional supernatural fairytale, cause it’s not. It’s more of a poetic, feminist art-piece about witchery, ignorance and nature. If you look at it that way, you’ll probably love it.
Întregalde
Co-Wri/Dir: Radu Muntean
(I previously interviewed Radu about One Floor Below).
It’s a food bank in big-city Romania where volunteers are happily putting together care packages for the needy. Three of them — Maria, Dan and Iliac (Maria Popistasu, Alex Bogdan, Ilona Brezoianu) are ready for an adventurous and rewarding day. But they’re not visiting poor families in the city; rather, they’re heading for a remote town deep in the woods, where relief is needed most. But where the paved roads end, trouble begins. They meet an old man named Kente (Luca Sabin) on the road and offer him a ride. He tells strange and disgusting stories about the local area (is he a visionary or merely demented?) But when their car gets stuck in the mud, frustration turns to anger and none of them car get the car back to the main road. When they get hungry they are forced to dig into the supplies meant for the poor. They finally decide to split up and look for help at a local wood mill. But it’s getting darker and colder as night-time approaches. Will they ever find their way out of this strange forest?
Întregalde — I’m guessing the title is a pun on Transylvania — is a social satire about how good intentions don’t always lead to 
good results. It’s told like a fairytale, set in a complex, polyglot world, but there are no vampires here. The only monsters are issues like elder abuse, homophobia, marital problems and anti-Roma prejudice. But don’t worry, it’s not a heavy-issues movie — although there are some shockingly realistic scenes — rather it’s a humorous look at our own preconceptions.
The White Fortress
Wri/Dir: Igor Drljaca
(I previously interviewed Igor about Krivina, In Her Place, and reviewed his film The Stone Speakers.)
Faruk (Pavle Cemerikic) is a teenaged boy with pale blue eyes in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzogovina. He has no memory of his dad, and his mom — a concert pianist — died when he was young. He lives with his grandmother in a housing block. He earns pocket money working with his uncle selling scrap metal for a few bucks. But he wants more. So he takes on small jobs for a local crime boss. He wants Faruk to find a girl and trick her into working as a prostitute. He builds up his courage and approaches a stranger in shopping mall and gives her his telephone number. And to both their surprise, she actually calls him back.
Mona (Sumeja Dardagan) is a young woman from a privileged family, the only daughter of a corrupt politician. She studies English but can’t stand what her parents represent. They are still strangers, but they soon fall in love, together exploring the 
hidden spaces of Sarajevo. But how long can it last? Mona’s parents plan to send her off to Toronto. The crime boss has cruel intentions, while her family is even more dangerous. Is their love destined for failure? Or like a fairytale will they both live happily ever after?
The White Fortress is a coming of age drama about young lovers from different planets and the obstacles they face. Its beautiful cinematography caresses Sarajevo’s cityscapes and lingers on Faruk and Mona’s eyes, faces and bodies. Pavle Cemerikic is outstanding as Faruk; we really see inside his soul. The White Fortress is a lovely but melancholy romance.
The White Fortress is now available at the digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Întregalde opens in Toronto at the beautiful Paradise Cinema on March 29th; and You Won’t Be Alone starts theatrically on April 1st; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
culturalmining.com 
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