AFI Fest Best Films- Page 2 of 7

Farewell Amor – AFI Fest 2020

Farewell Amor follows a father reunited with his wife and daughter after 17 years living apart. It starts with their reunion in New York airport and then splits into three parts to replay each of their experiences of their first few days back together. This allows us to see each of their perspectives in order to understand each of them better. Whilst each of them see things differently, they all highlight the struggle of living together after a long time apart.

Their first few days together feels pretty awkward. There’s a clash of cultures between Walter and Esther, the reunited couple. Walter has become accustomed to U.S. culture after 17 years living in New York. He’s created a new life for himself with the immigrant community around him. By contrast, Esther hasn’t had the privilege of officially starting a new life, as she’s been waiting for her U.S. visa. To perhaps deal with the struggle and uncertainty of their long distance relationship, she has found peace and happiness in becoming a stronger christian. Their different paths have caused Esther to become more strict and passive whilst Walter has become accustomed to a more free and open way of life in the U.S. It’s shown in the treatment of Sylvia (their daughter) and in what they do in their free time: Walter dances whilst Esther cleans and shops. They’ve each grown apart over time.

However, the tone of the movie makes it feel like their differences can be worked out. Instead of emphasizing the drama in their new conflicting personalities, Farewell Amor uses a relaxed pace to give time for us to get to see each character through their own eyes. It makes it feel like the characters, like us, can see both sides of each other. That whilst they’re all struggling to adjust to their new lives together, they all know they’ve been through the hardest part and just need to persevere to make things work.

It’s a refreshing American made film about the African experience that focuses on family relationships instead of the usual war driven (Beasts of No Nation) and exceptional African (Mandela films, Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Queen of Katwe) narratives.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) – AFI Fest 2020

Eyimofe is split into two stories. One features Mofe, a middle aged man who works as an electrician and lives with his sister and her children. The other features Rosa, a young woman who works as a hairdresser that takes care of her younger, pregnant sister. They share two obvious things in common. Firstly, they’re both trying to escape Lagos by obtaining visas to emigrate to Europe. Secondly, they’re both struggling to get by. Together, they represent a desire to escape poverty.

However, their visas definitely don’t seem legitimate. Mofe tries to obtain his from a guy with a computer that works at a stall in the middle of the street. Rosa’s method is worse, as she’s found a local mafiosa woman that has offered to get her and her sister visas in exchange for their baby. Their methods are symbolic of the global apartheid that restrict the underprivileged from freedom of movement. As we saw in AFI Fest’s I Carry You With Me and Farewell Amor, the legal routes for obtaining a visa to ‘the West’ are extremely limited for those without money.

Their lives aren’t just affected by their inability to get visas. They’re also stuck in the bureaucracy of inadequate social welfare at home. After Mofe’s sister dies, he gets caught in a long process of different forms and fees he has to fill out and pay before her death can be resolved. We see the whole process, from paying the morgue where the body is interred through to settling the inheritance. Likewise, Rosa has to fork out endless fees and debts to help out her pregnant sister. In contrast, life for the middle and upper class is a breeze. Mofe’s wealthy father can hire an expensive lawyer to swoop in and claim his daughter’s inheritance even if he hasn’t seen her for 10 years. And Rosa’s new American boyfriend can suddenly ghost her when she needs him for financial support. The wealthy can take advantage of the underprivileged (Mofe and Rosa) when they’re up, and avoid them as soon as they’re asked to help.

Eyimofe is a two part film which captures the wealth and class divide in Lagos. When you’re doing OK, you’re allowed independence and respect, but as soon as you meet hardship, everyone avoids you or takes advantage.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Downstream to Kinshasa – AFI Fest 2020

The story of Downstream to Kinshasa starts with the Six Day War from 2000. Unlike the more famous 6 Day War fought between Israel and Egypt, this one was fought between Uganda and Rwanda in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Everything centered on the town of Kisangani where approximately 4,000 people were killed and 3,000 injured.

Among the survivors was director Dieudo Hamadi. In the Q&A for the film, he mentions that he was 15 or 16 during the conflict and doesn’t remember much about it. But on one return to his hometown his memories of the war were triggered from meeting a group of people (who become the focus of this documentary) that were disabled by it. He was privileged in being able to reconstruct a normal life and forget about the war, whilst others were permanently scared by it.

He was not the only one that forgot. And if one man who lived the war had lost his memories of it, it’s not too surprising that the rest of the town and country have forgotten the war too and the victims of it.

In Downstream to Kinshasa, we follow a group of people disabled by the war. They travel to the capital to make their story heard after it seems to have fallen on deaf ears at home. They want reparations from the country that refused to protect them.

Throughout their time in Kisangani and through their journey to Kinshasa, they’re shot going about their lives. One of the most incredible sections is their journey on a flat topped cargo boat down the Congo river. It’s transformed into a moving village with makeshift protection against the elements. It’s a multi-day journey that reminded me of the desert crossing migrants in Tenere.

Whilst they’re journeying, the director cuts between their present reality on their journey and shots of the group performing on the stage. The present documents their hope for change and their disabilities as we see it, whilst the shots of them performing on stage shows their story as they tell it. Their stage play appears self-deriding and built for a popular audience, but intertwining it in the documentary empowers their story. Simply including their experiences, as they tell it, validates them. They’re heard by more people thanks to this film. And in the context of their journey to the capital, including their story as they tell it emboldens their storytelling before they face their ultimate test – convincing the politicians and public in the capital.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Tragic Jungle (Selva trágica) – AFI Fest 2020

Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for jungle movies like this. Films where the jungle slowly ebbs away at the ego of each character until it merges with the forest and they disappear. Embrace of the Serpent, Apocalypse Now, and The Mercy of the Jungle are three great examples of this. In each of these films, the jungle is expansive and labyrinthine. As every part of it looks the same, it’s easy to see how you can begin to lose track of place and time – did I pass this tree 15 minutes ago, this rock looks familiar, etc. And once you’ve lost your place in time, the jungle starts to consume you, slowly dissolving your ego away.

Tragic Jungle stands out from the bunch in bringing the jungle to life. It uses the sounds of the Howler Monkey and Jaguar to turn it into a threatening physical entity. Their constant roars and grumbles occupying the sonic space are unnerving. The unease is further emphasized by the videos of the two animals mixed in with the main narrative. It makes it feel like the animals are just around the corner, waiting for the inevitable demise of the human protagonists. This is their home, and the Director, Yulene Olaizola, makes that clear.

The only character that seems comfortable in the jungle is the anonymous runaway, a young black Belizean woman chased across the River Hondo into Mexico by her hunters. It’s not clear if she’s escaped the gun of her hunter or not. But once she appears to a group of Mexican rubber harvesters out of the forest, she assumes her role as the Ixtabay woman, a legendary Mayan demon that appears from the forest to lure men to their deaths with her beauty. From this point, she’s completely silent among her new captors. However, her stoical face and slight smile to all the men that approach her, make it appear that she’s always in control.

Her character is exoticized by the Mexican rubber harvesters because of her race. Unlike them, who are a mix of Mexican mestizo and Mexican indigenous heritages, she is a black creole Belizean woman. She’s as unfamiliar to them as the jungle they’re working in, so it’s not surprising that they link her appearance to the supernatural.

Her exoticization also reflects the erasure of Afro-Mexicans from contemporary and historical Mexico. In using a Black creole woman from Belize as the Ixtabay woman, Tragic Jungle further ‘others’ the Black creole women of Mexico. It portrays Blackness as something exotic and unfamiliar to the Mexican characters of both indigenous and mixed Spanish and indigenous backgrounds, which enforces the foreignness of Blackness in Mexico despite it’s own Afro-Mexican community and links to African slavery. Because the Black characters are not Mexican, because they are exoticized and made to feel foreign, and because of the context of historical and present erasure of Afro-Mexicans in Mexico that is slowly gaining recognition, Tragic Jungle contributes to the systematic erasure of Blackness in Mexico.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Apples – AFI Fest 2020

The opening of Apples looks bleak. There aren’t any vibrant colors and not much light (as you can see from the shot above). The main character starts out in a dark apartment bashing his head against the wall, and walks out into an overcast day with dark clothing. Even the narrow aspect ratio restricts an open view of the world he exists in. Apples has all the hallmarks of a depressing movie. But the bleakness is countered by a lot of deadpan comedy which ultimately provides a great commentary on modern day Instagram culture.

Not long after the main character walks out his apartment, he falls asleep on a bus and wakes up without his memory. What’s strange is that he doesn’t seem too startled or surprised that his memory is gone. It’s just another thing to happen to him that day. As a result it doesn’t feel like a big deal to us either. We also don’t know what he’s lost as his character hasn’t been established at this point. We don’t know how he feels, what he’s thinking, or if he has a family or job. We don’t even know his name.

The deadpan humor kicks off in the hospital ward. It’s where he discovers his love for apples, and where he’s put through multiple memory tests. One highlight was watching him take a music identification test. The ‘I’ve got this one in the bag’ certainty in his eyes as he pairs Jingle Bells to a completely unrelated flashcard image is hilarious. In the hospital he finds a lot of other people like him as the victims of the memory loss epidemic increases. For those who aren’t claimed by family members, the doctors offer a program to help them create a new life.

Each patient on the program is given a Polaroid camera and scrapbook (the film exists in a world without internet and mobile phones). They’re then given a bunch of tasks to do which they have to capture on camera as proof of completion. Most of the tasks are fairly ordinary life experiences like riding a bike, but they get more exceptional as the film progresses. Our protagonist goes about it fairly robotically – capturing everything he needs to without appearing to enjoy the journey. He’s left with a document which appears to show a much more interesting life than he actually leads and had led (before the amnesia). It’s a critique of the Instagram culture which superficially picks out the very best life pictures vs. the actual boring lives we live outside of the camera lens. As despite the great collection of photos our unnamed protagonist has put together, his character still doesn’t exist. He’s still nameless, characterless, and emotionless.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.