Time-travel is a key ingredient of some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. It holds an unnatural power to change the future and the past, adding the driving plot behind the Back to the Future and Terminator series from the 1980s and a few modern Christopher Nolan films. Over in Italy, Alice Rohrwacher has mastered the ability to use time-travel naturally. Instead of using it as the driving force of the plot and drama, it is the icing on the cake. She has combined time-travel with wholly Italian influences; De Sica’s Neo-realism and Fellini’s Surrealism, to make her own fantastic style.
La Chimera starts with a dream. Sepia-tinted snippets of a woman in a garden evokes the feeling of warm nostalgia. The dream is interrupted by a train conductor asking for tickets, which introduces us to our dreamer: Arthur, played by Josh O’Connor. He picks out a very old looking train ticket the size of a postcard and his train-cabin-mates pick up on his unusual accent and ask where he comes from. “Far,” is his one-worded answer, coding the mystery of his character.
So who is Arthur, and has he come from another era? He doesn’t reveal anything obvious on the train. It’s not clear where he’s going or coming from, and as per his one-worded answer in the paragraph above, we don’t know who he is or where he is from either. A few puzzle pieces are inferred from the following scenes, but these do not give us a complete picture. We find out that:
He’s English
He’s been in jail – likely as the fall guy for a troubadour group of associates
He’s looking for a woman
He has a special skill at finding treasures from the past
Whilst these attributes build his character, they also all add to his mysteriousness by leading to new questions:
Why is an Englishman in rural Italy with a group of grave-robbers?
What led to his capture and was he turned in?
Who is he looking for and what happened to them?
How did he get his supernatural skill?
This mystery makes him appear like he’s been picked up from another world and time and plonked into rural Italy.
Time-travel has popped up before in Alice Rohrwacher’s films. In her previous feature, Happy as Lazzaro, the titular character falls from a great height, blacks out, and reappears in a modern era, portaling from his previous life in feudal Italy. Whilst the time-travel is more metaphorical than literal, Rohrwacher makes the jump more believable by situating Lazzaro (the lead character) in a location stuck in the past; a small rural Italian town with old, decaying houses, no modern infrastructure, and no signs of modern technology, before transporting him to the modern city. The town that Arthur finds himself in is exactly the same setting as Lazzaro’s decaying town. His house is a DIY shack on the outside of the town wall, he visits the crumbling house of his lost lover, and electronic screens and electricity itself are practically non-existent. This setting, combined with Arthur’s mystery makes viewers accustomed to Rohrwacher’s films feel like Arthur is from another era and place, and has got lost in old-town Italy whilst searching for his lost love.
Conclusion
If the time-travel and mystery haven’t already sold you on watching La Chimera, know that watching La Chimera is like watching a bubbling pot of Italian Cinema influences whilst witnessing a new talent find their stylistic voice. There’s pieces of De Sica’s neo-realism in the poverty-stricken characters and tough world they exist in, fragments of Antonioni’s mood-driven mystery in their vague backgrounds and existence, and a large chunk of Fellini’s surrealism and panache in the bombastic scenes and cinematic magic. Rohrwacher in La Chimera manages to bring together all these influences whilst building on the natural time-travel of Happy as Lazzaro, forming her own style from the embers of the Italian classics.
Here’s our (very delayed) list of the best international films of 2023. One big learning from 2023 is that having two kids under 3 in the household is not conducive to a lot of film watching. This will probably change in the not too distant future, but until then, we’re focusing on a top 20 instead of a top 30.
The list captures films from 5 continents (sorry Australasia) and features a lot of recognizable names as film festivals and distributors have returned to films that attract a wider range of film fans. Some of these films are brilliant – the returns of Aki Kaurismaki and Hayao Miyazaki are most welcome and there are also returns for less established names, such as Lila Aviles and Rebecca Zlotowski. In among are a few debuts, including an interesting and highly personal documentary from Milisuthando Bongela. We’re hoping to find more debut filmmakers in 2024 amidst some highly anticipated international releases from Mati Diop, Abderrahmane Sissako, Alonzo Ruizpalacios, and Victor Kossakovsky.
20 Best International Films of 2023
20. Milisuthando (South Africa)
Set in the past, present, and future of South Africa, Milisuthando is a memory-driven documentary that captures the South African experience with intimacy. Like the journal films of Jonas Mekas, it captures the feeling of a generation trying to put together the pieces of its past. In this case, an exploration of growing up through major political/historical events as South Africa ended apartheid.
19. Rimini (Austria)
Richie Bravo, once a ‘successful’ Schlager singer and ladies man, is now a middle aged hustler funded by half-filled restaurant concerts and prostitution. His character is a hilarious leftover from the easy-going 90s that just doesn’t fit in todays world. Whilst he assumes a free-loving Italian identity – maybe to counter his Dad’s Nazi days – he outwardly disdains the immigrants/refugees in the background. He’s a mess – but at least a big hilariously harmless one.
18. Bobi Wine: The People’s President (Uganda)
The inspiring leader battling political oppression road-show stops in Uganda after touring Russia (Navalny) and Kenya (Softie). In this documentary, our leader (Bobi Wine), is not just battling one of the worlds longest serving dictators, but continuing to release catchy reggae music. His fierce spirit and willingness to sacrifice himself for his country make this a captivating but difficult watch.
17. Other People’s Children (France)
A teacher full of life falls in love with Ali and grows close to his 4-year-old daughter, Leila. She becomes like a mother to her, provoking a desire for a family of her own. A rarely considered relationship and some great performances, makes Other People’s Children feel very touching and genuine.
16. The Blue Caftan (Morocco)
Touzani’s second feature follows the same style, setting, and structure as her first (Adam). It’s also filmed in close ups and a few mid distance shots to create a strong intimacy between the audience and her characters. The Moroccan setting is obvious but is subtly established through the close distance shots – we never see more than a few meters of streets, the tailor shop, or the bathhouse. Whilst many elements of the story follow Touzani’s debut, The Blue Caftan is another brilliantly warm portrayal of the battle between loyalty, friendship and love.
15. Godzilla: Minus One (Japan)
The 2024 Academy Award winner for Best Visual Effects is one of the most epic films of 2023. Without Godzilla, the film might resemble the overly patriotic notes of the new Chinese blockbusters a bit too closely. With Godzilla, it helps to reinforce the apocalyptic feeling of a country destroyed by World War 2 – not just by the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also by the carpet bombing of Tokyo where this film is set.
14. The Buriti Flower (Brazil)
2022 saw the release of National Geographic’s documentary The Territory, which followed the plight of indigenous people in the Brazilian rainforest. Whilst the documentary won awards for its coverage of deforestation and violence against indigenous people, The Buriti Flower tells it better. The Buriti Flower features the indigenous protagonists instead of processing their language and voices through mediators. In doing so, the Krahô are given a political voice and agency within their community and on the national scale.
13. City of Wind (Mongolia)
City of Wind covers the classic ‘tradition vs. modernity’ trope pretty well through its high-school coming-of-age romance. The setting stands out – Ulaanbaatar – which combines a mass of urban development with its rural, undeveloped outskirts, visualizing the encroaching development on tradition. Tradition is represented in a young shaman, balancing school with his cultural role as a ‘modern’ woman pulls him out of his focused life and into modernity. Will he or won’t he be the end of his cultural lineage?
12. Falcon Lake (Canada)
If there’s a genre that has a higher chance of landing on my best-of-the-year list than any other, it’s the summer vacation romance. The genre, especially when shot with grainy footage, always evokes a nostalgia for summer holidays filled with boredom-provoked spontaneity. Falcon Lake captures the summer vibes well and adds a layer of mystery fueled by lake based horror films.
11. Passages (France)
If a movie features Franz Rogowski, you can assume the acting is going to be worth watching, and Passages is no exception. He’s joined by a commanding Ben Wishaw and a naive Adele Exarchopoulos to make an electric love triangle that moves at Tomas/Rogowski’s whim.
10. Unrest (Switzerland)
It’s not easy to describe or categorize Unrest. It’s not a documentary, but it is too realistic to be a drama. The pacing feels closest to slow film, but with a unique historic lens that captures an era in the Industrial Revolution where everything has become farcically dictated by clock time (using different clocks – train, factory, home). The conflict between these clocks triggers a mini anarchist stand within a watch making factory in the Swiss mountains.
9. Chile 76 (Chile)
Chile 76 treads the same ground as a plethora of Chilean and Argentinian films which also cover their respective police states in the second half of the 20th Century. The red + blue paint scene is brilliantly memorable (if not a bit obvious), but this film stands out for its ability to drive anxiety like none of the films that preceded it. Thanks to a disruptive soundtrack, which turns mundane everyday scenes into ominously paranoid ones, we’re never allowed to settle.
8. Return to Seoul (France/South Korea)
Don’t even think about mentioning adoption or biological parents to Freddie. Perhaps the switch moments are a bit obvious, but Park Ji-Min flips her character brilliantly every time they come up. She plays the unpredictable character scarily – see Alfredo Castro in Pablo Larrains Tony Manero – or even a more edgy version of Renate Reinsve’s Julie in Worst Person in the World. But it’s not all about the performance, as the script keeps us invested in the growing identity crisis with each time-jump.
7. Fallen Leaves (Finland)
There’s no better film to break the anxiety-inducing Chile 76 and Return to Seoul than Fallen Leaves. It’s a beautifully simple love story featuring two down-to-earth lead characters, shot in an apparently ordinary style. Aki Kaurismaki makes filmmaking look easy.
6. Full Time (France)
Strap in for an everyday thrill ride. In Full Time, Eric Gravel turns managing hotel rooms into a high-octane thriller through frantic editing. The camera, like the lead actress, is always on the move creating anxiety-inducing cinema that will likely make you feel that your job and daily commute are a breeze.
5. Four Daughters (Tunisia)
Kaouther Ben Hania is back with more drama. Unlike her previous film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, Four Daughters is grounded in reality. Its authenticity and intimacy is granted by Olfa and her two daughters, who tell their family story with the help of actors playing their lost sisters within the confines of their four walls. Ben Hania encourages her cast to re-enact past trauma, like The Act of Killing, but on a more intimate scale, to create one of the most affecting movies of the year.
4. Rotting in the Sun (Mexico)
The best meta-comedy of the year, Rotting in the Sun features Sebastian Silva and Jordan Firstman playing satirized versions of themselves. It somehow manages to cross partying on gay nudist beaches with the mundanity of housework in Mexico City to create a film which will keep you guessing. It’s the most original film you’ll see from 2023.
3. The Delinquents (Argentina)
Argentina is the home of long, cosy, trivial mysteries. Our 2023 entry follows in the vein of El Pampero Cine, whose Trenque Lauquen was our favorite film of 2022. The Delinquents follows the stories of two men involved in a bank heist to escape unfulfilled lives as bank clerks. Their journeys take us to prison in remote Argentina, a beautiful riverside picnic spot, and famous pizza spots in Buenos Aires. If you have time for some indulgent storytelling – this is your best choice from 2023.
2. Totem (Mexico)
5 years after The Chambermaid and Lila Aviles is back with another affecting Mexico City film. This one takes place entirely within the confines of seven-year-old Sol’s family house as the family gets ready for a birthday party. Like the brilliance of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, Totem throws us into a family event and forces us to make ourselves comfortable. As we (the viewers) immerse ourselves in the family, the film becomes more and more emotional as the seriousness of the occasion becomes apparent.
1. The Boy And The Heron (Japan)
Miyazaki is back, and this one feels like a departing film as it makes peace with all the existential angst of his previous films. It also comes to terms with a legacy that may not be continued. It’s a magnificent end to an incredible career and gives us all one more chance to enjoy his magic. This is one of his best, and will continue to grow in the next few decades.
HONORABLE MENTIONS FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL FILMS OF 2023:
Mami Wata (Nigeria), Smoking Causes Coughing (France), Suzume (Japan), The Eight Mountains (Italy), Godland (Iceland), Tiger Stripes (Indonesia), Society of the Snow (Chile), Terrestrial Verses (Iran), Los Colonos (Chile), El Conde (Chile)
If you think we’ve missed a film from a list that you think is one of the best international films of 2023, please get in touch on Twitter or by email.
Watching the 2024 Oscar shorts is the quickest and easiest way to get closer to watching all of the Oscar contenders. So if you’re looking for something to say about this year’s Academy Awards, check out these short films at cinemas near you.
The Animated 2024 Oscar Shorts
Letter to a Pig (Israel)
Divided into two halves, the Animation Is Film Festival winner follows a Holocaust survivor’s story to a classroom of primarily ungrateful students, mocking his age and confounding seriousness when discussing his friendship to an unnamed pig. Slowly, the story shrinks to the focus of Alma, one schoolgirl who breaks the film into high fantasy – a torturous dream that evokes the cruel mob mentality of the past.
The average animation viewer will put a lot of prestige on the more creative visual displays, those films that take place in a dimension unseen to human eyes, whether it be felt or caricature. Letter to a Pig may not be the single most creative concept in the running this year, but it is the most immediately stunning – live action footage overdrawn with an extreme amount of minimalist line drawing. That minimalism, its biggest asset, is unfortunately quickly trumped by a dogged amalgamation of trauma and historical setbacks, resulting in more curiosity than rousing passion. -ST
Ninety-Five Senses (U.S.)
Coy is a senior citizen reflecting on the power and nostalgia that his five primary senses have brought him presented in a curiously dark order. Voiced by Tim Blake Nelson, Coy plays along with a chronology of significant events in his life, milestones marked by entertainment, love, ambition and eventually, death.
The Hess pair of directors & writers, using their Oscar nomination to eclipse their Napoleon Dynamite fame before piloting the upcoming Minecraft adaptation, have created something special with Ninety-Five Senses, a shockingly dramatic story that revels equally in its diverse and various styles of hand-drawn animation as it does its dramaturgy. While fishing for emotion where the wandering tales of an old man seem silly at best, the Hess’ make a sincere and effective plea for compassion and forgiveness within one’s own perspective, a deceiving victory if this year’s short film lineup needed at least one to speak for. -ST
Our Uniform (Iran)
Following a bit of unique structural storytelling, Our Uniform unravels a traditional Iranian schoolgirl’s daily attire to discuss the conventions that present with a young woman’s own identity. By taking the shirt, label, sleeve and linings bit-by-bit, colors and patterns reveal a creative tapestry by which the unnamed narrator contemplates her own femininity while dissecting what details about her past marked her outer shell most permanently.
At seven minutes, Our Uniform is the shortest Oscar nominee at this year’s induction, though an argument could made that it is also the prettiest – the carry-on textures Moghaddam uses to bring the girls themselves into their own environment, a schoolhouse or a road along which to travel, is immediately captivating. Naturally, with such briefness some a slight narrative, Our Uniform ending on more of a mid-sentence brushaway than anything resembling a punctuating note of contemplation. It is, simply, brief and honest, a meditation on time that has very little of it to spare. -ST
Pachyderme (France)
A young girl named Louise spends a routine summer with her grandparents, playing on swing sets and swimming in the local lagoon. Her small figure is stiff and roughed, overwhelmed by huge locks of hair that gives Louise a fairy-like physicality, matching the ethereal wonder of her painted world. Louise reveals that she thinks a lot about monsters, one in particular, who haunts her holiday trip, disrupting her innocent countryside summer.
Pachyderm is a deeply interesting, though uncompelling, experiment for the same reasons that make its nomination so intrinsic. It feels as though every year at least one animated short beckons a darker form of animation serving as trauma vehicle, small-form character arcs already knee-deep in an uncompromising past. A struggle with subtlety erupts in Pachyderm, the delicacy of Louise’s life at odds with her vague notions to disassociate. Where terrifying stories of childhood instability often layer into the hurt of residual mental warfare, Clément’s route is dark and lonely, a small light in an otherwise clouded vision. -ST
War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko (U.S.)
On opposite trenches at the climax of World War I, two frontline soldiers for the unnamed sides spread their free time out with the least leisurely round of chess ever played. By sending a carrier pigeon back-and-forth without their superiors’ knowledge, the two engage in a bout of metaphors, the escalation of their own board game matching the severity of the embattlements supressing their allies just outside their doors.
With a production credit by Sean Ono Lennon, WAR IS OVER! may win the Oscar on sheer starpower alone. The traces of the short’s development and press tour even go back to herald Peter Jackson, with Unreal animation done by his partner-owned Wētā FX Limited. It makes perfect sense, then, that WAR IS OVER! is easily the most treacly short of the animated roster, a laughable sentiment gone wrong that peace can overcome anything – or, at least that the power of Christmas, when John Lennon is the baron of tidings, is stronger than thought and diplomacy (if you want it). -ST
The Documentary 2024 Oscar Shorts
ABC’s Of Book Banning (U.S.)
Over 2,000 books have been removed from school districts in the U.S. The ABC’s of Book Banning follows the human toll the future will pay for depriving children of their right to read and learn about a complex world. Interviews with children and authors shed light on this ongoing dangerous precedent.
An important message made for screen with the elegance of a PowerPoint slide, ABC’s of Book Banning tries and fails to live up to the urgency and creativity that influencer-activists convey on TikTok. This documentary short interviews recognizable names (Judy Blume, Amanda Gorman) with cute kids, including one with a luscious mullet, to tell us that book banning is bad. Unfortunately, there’s little interest in the interviewees beyond snappy headline quotes, and the same surface-level overview emanates from the films slap-dash presentation. Despite the potential fodder of the polarizing subject, this is arguably the worst short of the bunch. -RS
Island In Between (Taiwan)
The islands of Kinmen sit as a barred entryway for the Taiwanese people to the Chinese mainland, a beachside land of sand and honey that serves as a focal point in the history of the Chinese Civil War. Remnants of that history soak in the seawater while the skyscrapers of modern China loom just miles away, visible over the horizon, as a symbol of the continued tension and growing disparity between the two nations, or so it would visually seem.
As cursory as they come, Island in Between might be the lightest and most immediately forgettable documentary in this year’s nominee pool, an already congested pipeline of nonfiction blandness. Like a teaser for something bigger and greater, Chiang’s story relies heavily on the immediate reliability of his subjects, their island fever boiled into something more sustained, a sunken propaganda-state they know no bounds from. For Island in Between to work, so must the direct shift to the political perspective of the mainland, a porthole Chiang’s film simply doesn’t seem to have the time for. -ST
Nai Nai & Wai Po (U.S.)
Sean Wang’s two grandmothers live in the same household, the best of friends – one from his maternal side, one paternal. They share in most everything together, co-opting each others lives as their own responsibilities for upkeep in this new post-pandemic world they’ve found themselves. With no left to care for otherwise, Wang’s Nai Nai and his Wài Pó confront the rest of their time together with love, fear, and comical sincerity.
Wang gained an immense amount of timely attention for his Sundance Award-winning feature debut Didi, which rose in profile around the same time his short received Oscar attention. It should be noticed, however, that Nai Nai & Wài Pó nonetheless stands as the least tedious of this year’s documentary shorts. Wang is easily able to immortalize his grandmothers’ wisdom and humor within the short’s brief runtime, a contemplation on the inevitabilities of life and beyond that speaks without hesitation to the reality we find ourselves in at the final crossroads – not alone, and absolutely not unfulfilled. -ST
The Barber of Little Rock (U.S.)
The Barber of Little Rock explores America’s widening racial wealth gap through the story of Arlo Washington, a self-made businessman who founds a non-profit bank to uplift a community that has been largely excluded from the financial engines that create wealth.
A pleasing documentary about a man set on uplifting his community – first through the barber occupation, and secondly adapting to a traditionally inhospitable banking community. The portrayal of the protagonists is so positive that it toes the hagiographic line, making you feel a bit skeptical of the many hugs and charitable grants Washington issues to community members on film; “is it all just for the camera?.” This isn’t helped by the style of the documentary which recalls the same inspirational lens flares over-used by political nominees in their TV campaigns. Skepticism aside, the message is an important one and a sign that the traditionally conservative Academy board is evolving. -RS
The Last Repair Shop (U.S.)
The most effective of this year’s doc shorts at giving perspective to the lower class (though, ironically, also the most well-funded courtesy of Searchlight Pictures), The Last Repair Shop dives anthologically into the backgrounds of four supervising craftsmen who maintain the host of instruments used by children across the Los Angeles Unified School District. In the reaches of downtown LA, all four subjects relate their own upbringing to the value they place in music education, both as a tool for extracurricular guidance and the harmonious lives they lead as experts in a career built on service to underrepresented parts of the community.
Bowers has been on a hot streak recognizable to even the most unsavvy Oscar voters – aside from his original score work on Green Book and The Color Purple, he was previously nominated in this same category for A Concerto Is a Conversation, a documentary that distilled the creator’s own legacy as a composer and instrumentalist into the lineage of Hollywood’s history far beyond his own. The Last Repair Shop, a semi-apparent sequel, ties its subjects even more succinctly than Concerto, a more diverse ensemble remarkable not only for earning their career-driven stripes but from how eclectic those stripes are in unison, coming together in uplifting & wonderfully empathetic fashion. -ST
The Live Action 2024 Oscar Shorts
The After (U.K.)
David Oyelowo finds himself in one of the most overly-dramatic Live Action shorts of recent times as we watch him unfold his range of emotions to a cheesy choice of backing tracks.
The After starts off in familiar territory; a father connecting with his daughter, but takes a wildly dramatic turn in an instant. The randomness of the sudden tonal shift is like reading a story written by a kid that has just discovered the art of story-telling; “I like the sand-pit and SHARKS ARE EATING THE FISH.” It’s worth watching for the comic effect the set-up unintentionally produces. To the film’s credit, it does recover the mood for a few scenes in which Oyelowo is silent. Missed calls and everyday conversations symbolize his loneliness. However, the film tries to outdo the dramatic start with an equally dramatic ending, bringing an awkwardly in-your-face crescendo succeeded by a awkwardly comforting song choice. Is this a secret comedy? – RS
Invincible (Canada)
Inspired by a true story, Invincible recounts the last 48 hours in the life of Marc-Antoine Bernier, a 14-year-old boy on a desperate quest for freedom.
Invincible feels very similar to the films of Xavier Dolan (I Killed My Mother, Mommy). All feature unruly teenagers situated in Francophone Canada struggling with their parents and themselves. The grainy, slightly faded look of the film combined with the abundance of nature emphasizes their angst. There’s too much natural physical space around them to make themselves feel significant. Invincible is an unusual pick for the Academy Awards, but a worthy one. It’s well-made and captures the unsettled mind of young Marc-Antoine authentically, even if the style and subject matter isn’t wholly fresh. – RS
Knight of Fortune (Denmark)
The loss of a loved one, the grief, the risk of yellow skin, and a coffin, this is too much for Karl to face. It is much easier to fix a broken lamp. A chance encounter with a stranger will help him face his pain.
Surprisingly, the makers behind Knight of Fortune have no apparent connection to the last Danish Live Action Short nominee, On My Mind (maybe there are just a lot of loyal Danish filmmakers on the voting committee). Both are about widowers confronting their grief in unique ways – On My Mind with karaoke and Knight of Fortune with an intriguing stranger. Knight of Fortune is better than On My Mind. Firstly, it’s not manipulatively holding back a reveal, and secondly it’s odd-ball humor comes much more naturally with the chemistry between the two leads. – RS
Red, White, and Blue (U.S.)
Rachel is a single parent living paycheck to paycheck. When an unexpected pregnancy threatens to unravel her already precarious position, she’s forced to cross state lines in search of an abortion.
Heavily influenced by Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, this follows another woman that heads on the road in search of abortion rights. It has a similarly grainy look and even the lead actors look similar. However, Red, White, and Blue hides an ace in its hand in the third act. It’s an ace that gives the short its oomph, but also leans into the extreme to convey a simple message; abortion rights should be protected. – RS
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (U.K.)
A Road Dahl story about a rich man who learns about a guru who can see without using his eyes and then sets out to master the skill in order to cheat at gambling.
The A-List short of this year’s nominees. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar features Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade. It’s also directed by Wes Anderson, who surprisingly, has never won an Oscar. As the clear favorite, this might be the way he finally gets his Oscar recognition, and it would be deservingly so. It features the trademark Wes Anderson style – heavily curated production design and color schemes, with quirky storytelling – but is backed by quality source material from a bonafide story-teller. This is the Oscar shorts; we’ve seen Two Distant Strangers knock out Oscar Isaac, but surely this is Wes Anderson’s time. -RS
Whilst we couldn’t attend AFI Fest 2023 in person, we were able to catch a wide range of screeners from the festival representing Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe. Here’s a quick recap of the films we saw, starting with our personal favorites.
Our Top Three Films from AFI Fest 2023
Four Daughters (Tunisia)
Kaouther Ben Hania is back with more drama. Unlike her previous film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, Four Daughters is grounded in reality. Its authenticity and intimacy is granted by Olfa and her two daughters, who tell their family story with the help of actors playing their lost sisters within the confines of their four walls. Ben Hania encourages her cast to re-enact past trauma, like The Act of Killing, but on a more intimate scale, to create one of the most affecting movies of the year.
The Buriti Flower (Brazil)
2022 saw the release of National Geographic’s documentary The Territory, which followed the plight of indigenous people in the Brazilian rainforest. Whilst the documentary won awards for its coverage of deforestation and violence against indigenous people, The Buriti Flower tells it better. The Buriti Flower features the indigenous protagonists instead of processing their language and voices through mediators. In doing so, the Krahô are given a political voice and agency within their community and on the national scale.
Set Lam (La Reunion)
Just like Mami Wata and Faya Dayi, you’ll find dreamy monochromatic images in this short film set on the island of La Reunion. These visuals make the film memorable, especially the star-lit sky, and scenes in a pulsating night-club to contrast with the underwater abyss. It also contains mystical magic along the lines of Madagascar’s When the Stars Meet the Sea including a dance with death.
More Great Films from AFI Fest 2023
Terrestrial Verses (Iran)
Anyone familiar with Iranian film releases over the last few years will find a similar satirical portrayal of Iran’s Kafka-esque bureaucracy. Although the form of the film is nothing unique, the high standards of like-minded films such as There is No Evil and A Hero are also found on Terrestrial Verses. Each of the film’s vignettes are simply shot (one fixed camera for each with speakers off-screen) but highly engrossing.
City of Wind (Mongolia)
City of Wind covers the classic ‘tradition vs. modernity’ trope pretty well through its high-school coming-of-age romance. The setting stands out – Ulaanbaatar – which combines a mass of urban development with its rural, undeveloped outskirts, visualizing the encroaching development on tradition. Tradition is represented in a young shaman, balancing school with his cultural role as a ‘modern’ woman pulls him out of his focused life and into modernity. Will he or won’t he be the end of his cultural lineage?
The Settlers (Chile)
A bread-and-butter macho explorer’s film, The Settlers follows an unlikely trio’s journey across the uncharted tail of South America. Like in Godland, the landscape is portrayed brutally because of the unsavory protagonists that are traversing it – a Texan mercenary and ex-British soldier. The mixed-race Chilean that accompanies them, like the indigenous people of the region, is a victim of different guises of power, as conveyed in the film’s third act jab at the authenticity of Chilean nationhood.
The Rest – Featuring Quirkiness and Intimate Stories
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Estonia)
A documentary that takes place almost entirely in a sauna, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood captures intimate conversations between Estonian women. The focus of the film is on storytelling and not the visuals. Only a few of the storytellers are shown, and most of the shots are close ups of their bodies, rarely revealing a whole person. Whilst the visuals are limited, the stories become more and more dramatic, covering a wide range of the woman’s experience.
Cobweb (South Korea)
With Parasite, Song Kang-ho became the most famous Korean actor in the U.S. Whilst not directed by him, Cobweb is very much his film as his energy propels the heavy, but often funny, plot forward. It’s a chaotic satire of filmmaking, with Song Kang-ho playing a director convinced he just needs to re-shoot the ending of his film to turn it into a masterpiece to revive his stalling career.
Tiger Stripes (Malaysia)
Tiger Stripes is for fans of Carrie, Titane, and TV soaps/melodramas. It’s quirky body-transformation high-school coming-of-age plot just about works for audiences unfamiliar with Malaysian culture. However, this film is more of a blast for those in-tune with crazy Malaysian politics (Fictional Dr Rahim vs. Real King of Shamans), the power of TikTok, and the conservative wave in the country that will likely censor this film because of its sexuality (they almost censored a Coldplay concert).
Primetime Mother (Philippines)
A TV gameshow dream for a band of desperate mothers competing for money. However the dreams become exploitative nightmares as the mums are forced to sell their integrity for the gods of entertainment.
The Echo (Mexico)
This quiet documentary reminded me of Iliana Sosa’s What We Leave Behind and Chloe Zhao’s Songs My Brother Taught Me. It’s fairly bleak and doesn’t have a story that moves us through the melancholy, but is a very well-made portrait of remote Mexico.
As per previous years, the base was high for all the films we saw at AFI Fest 2023, so whilst we had our favorites, all of the above had their plaudits. Please find previous coverage of AFI Fest here.
Tears of Joy is a 15 minute reminder that bullying isn’t a game. It is designed to trigger those who have experienced being bullied and to scare anyone related to the victims. However, its scare tactic methods prioritize melodrama over a real exploration of the subtleties of bullying.
Similar to Where I Come From and Shaina, Tears of Joy feels like a throw-back public service announcement. Its message is very clear (bullying is bad) and it uses intense examples to convey it. These examples take up the entire short film and are designed to evoke anger/horror in those who view the bullying, and sympathy and sadness for the victim. However, the intensity of the examples, and obviousness of the bullying, out-shouts what is often subtle and concealed. The bullying is so clear to us that it’s hard to believe that the adults choose to overlook it, especially as it appears to be every student against Joy. There’s no attempts on the school kids to hide it, so it feels unrealistic that they’re not caught and reprimanded. Meanwhile, Tears of Joy also infers that bullying is brutal and obvious, ignoring its more subtle guises.
Joy and the lead bully do get brief scenes with their parents for brief moments of character development, but this isn’t enough to justify the direction each character takes. Almost every scene of this short film is taken up by footage of school kids bullying Joy, or Joy crying alone (which she does very well, kudos to the young actor). This makes the film appear more exploitative – focused on shocking the viewers rather than building on the dialogue around bullying. Less focus on showing traumatic bullying and more focus on the characters and their motivations and feelings would have been helpful to justify the conclusion of the film. Spending more time building the characters would have also helped convey the complexities of bullying and its many forms.
Ultimately, if you’re a sucker for traumatic films designed to trigger emotions with a low budget, here’s Tears of Joy. It manipulates emotion by focusing on shocks and some intense crying scenes, carried out well by Neila Jones.
What to Watch Next
Whilst these exploitative, PSA style ‘message films’ aren’t my cup of tea, there are plenty of them from around the world. For more check out any of the following:
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