Reviews - Page 143

Giving you our points of view on the latest docs in release and on the circuit.

Review: ‘Mrs. Fang’

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Mrs. Fang (France/China/Germany, 86 min.) Dir. Wang Bing Programme: Wavelengths (North American Premiere) I don’t know if it’s Chinese master documentarian Wang Bing’s rare skills—pairing the professional’s easy way with subjects with the artist’s formal assuredness—or the unprecedented crudeness of this late capitalist epoch that makes _Mrs. Fang_ such a vital variation on the old-relative-dies/younger-generation-is-callous archetype. There have been classics in the genre: Yasujiro Ozu’s _Tokyo Story_, of course — itself inspired by Leo McCarey’s _Make Way for Tomorrow_ — and Hou Hsiao-Hsien does it three times over in _A Time to Live and a Time to Die_. In those

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Review: ‘Good Luck’

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Good Luck (France/Germany, 143 min.) Dir. Ben Russell Programme: Wavelengths (North American Premiere)   The epigraph to Ben Russell’s Good Luck — an account of a mescaline-induced hallucination of a rock repeatedly splitting in two and recombining courtesy of poet and painter Henri Michaux — promises parallelism, and the film delivers. Belying the vaunted immediacy of the cinematic experience, Good Luck is a completely, transparently structural work wherein the whole is evident from the very first shot. The film passes more like architecture or installation than narrative cinema, giving itself up to a slow and methodical (not to say sometimes

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Review: ‘3/4’

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3/4 (Bulgaria/Germany, 82 min.) Dir. Ilian Metev Featuring: Mila Mihova, Nikolay Programme: Discovery (North American Premiere)   What are some of the traits that come to mind when one imagines a “festival film”? Long takes? Hand held camerawork? Non-professional actors? Kitchen sink realism? Natural light? Silence? Director Ilian Metev’s first narrative work, 3/4, has every “festival film” cliché imaginable, which is too bad since there’s a lot to admire in the way he captures the melancholic atmosphere of grief and anger that comes with death. The film will undoubtedly find many fans—it’s already won the top prize from the Cinema

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Review: ‘Of Sheep and Men’

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Of Sheep and Men (Switzerland/France/Qatar, 78 min.) Dir. Karim Sayad Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   We all know that humans and sheep are different beasts but Sayad’s doc suggests that there are similarities. When expected to follow the shepherd and keep in line with the herd, sheep might stomp their feet, huff, puff, and blow straight through the pen—but what about men and women? The Arab Spring movement is one of the most powerful contemporary examples in which ordinary people refused to be complacent and took to the streets to spark a revolution. The waves of protests rippled around

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Review: ‘Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle’

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Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle (Muchos Hijos, un Mono y un Castillo) (Spain, 88 min.) Dir. Gustavo Salmerón Programme: TIFF Docs (North American Premiere)   Julita Salmerón insists more than once in Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle that nobody outside of her friends and family will have any interest in watching her story. Julita has a point, since family movies often hold little value for viewers who don’t share the genes or immediate concerns of their subjects or creators, but she couldn’t be farther from the truth when it comes to this film. Director

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Review: ‘There is a House Here’

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There is a House Here (Canada, 105 min) Dir. Alan Zweig Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   What are the roles and responsibilities of artists who want to explore stories of communities outside their own? This question is a hot topic in the cultural milieu, as debates wage concerning who can or should tell such stories. In the midst of these editorials, radio rants, Twitter wars, toxic Facebook threads, hot takes, and often-justified outrage, an important question often gets lost in the shuffle: if allies want to help, what is the appropriate course of action? Along comes There Is a

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Review: ‘Azmaish: A Journey Through the Subcontinent’

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Azmaish: A Journey Through the Subcontinent (Pakistan, 85 min.) Dir. Sabiha Sumar Programme: TIFF Docs (North American Premiere)   The personal is political for Sabiha Sumar. The Pakistani filmmaker embarks on a daunting task to interrogate the complex relationship and divide between India and her native country. Her journey yields both challenges and rewards as she reflects upon the currents that shape national identity and collective consciousness and, in turn, shape the lives of all the inhabitants within a nation’s borders. Sumar admirably covers all her bases while tackling the Indo-Pakistani divide in all its complexity. At home, she visits

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Review: ‘An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power’

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (USA, 98 min.) Dir. Bonni Cohen, John Shenk   Eleven years ago, Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth implored mass audiences to wake-up and learn about climate change. Driven by a compelling PowerPoint presentation by former US Vice President Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth essentially updated Terre Nash’s eco doc formula from If You Love this Planet to speak to audiences and lay out a compelling argument about the threats to the planet. The film went on to earn considerable box office success and two Academy Awards that helped bring its call to action to

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Review: ‘Dawson City: Frozen Time’

Dawson City: Frozen Time (USA, 120 min.) Dir. Bill Morrison   It’s amazing to learn that Colin Low and Wolf Koenig’s City of Gold nearly became a greenhouse. The story goes that in 1947, Irene Crayford of Dawson City in the Yukon discovered old glass plate negatives within the walls of her home and sought advice from her employer, an artisan named Dick Diment, on how to remove the emulsion from them so that she could reuse the plates and build a greenhouse. Diment, recognising the historical significance of the plates, exchanged them for new ones and sent the negatives

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