Right from the beginning, you can tell that 17 year old Sparkle is lonely. Much like Amy, the lead in Maimouna Doucore’s Cuties, she’s stuck doing house chores for her grandparents. It doesn’t look like she has any friends at school or at work, and she doesn’t talk much. So when she meets a group of older girls dancing in the street, she finds the confidence and expressiveness in them that she wants to have. So she works her way into their clique and transforms from the children’s clothes wearing, shy 17 year old kid from the introduction into a vividly dressed, confident dancer.
Her gateway is Trini culture. In particular Soca music: a mix of calypso, reggae, dancehall unique to Trinidad which permeates She Paradise. Soca is present in the dancing and style, which combines with the music to give Sparkle a brand new modern key to her independence. Embracing the contemporary Trini culture through Soca opens up a new world that is totally unique to her world at home with her grandfather. It’s modern and fresh, instead of from the past. It allows her to forget about her childhood and home poverty, and have an opportunity to become a free independent woman.
She Paradise is a feature length version of the brilliant short film that debuted last year at a few festivals that we reviewed here. Like the short, the feature version has many of the same scenes, which are mostly included in the first part of the film. The feature also contains a few hints at Sparkle’s background, but it’s still not clear what she does before she meets the Soca crew. However, unlike the short, this feature film adds in a few male characters which take the focus away from the female friendship of the short. Instead, the focus switches more to Sparkle and how she navigates a world of patriarchy – represented by her father and Skinny, the male Soca artist. It’s a shame as the friendship between Sparkle and Mica was the highlight of the short.
Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.
New Order starts with a chaotic montage of images. There’s a modern art painting, a naked lady covered in green paint, and plenty of lifeless bodies. Each image flashes up on screen for half a second as bold orchestral music plays in the background. It’s a disorientating and sensationalist start which gives us a sign of the chaos to come.
The film relaxes for 15 minutes after the opening as we enter the safety bubble of an upper class wedding in Mexico City. There’s a lot of mingling and small talk. It’s a world which feels a lot like the exclusive Mexico City world shown in The Good Girls. Everyone is focused on their business and completely oblivious to the lives of the public outside of their social sphere.
However, some ominous signs start to appear that connect to the chaotic opening montage which the film uses to build unease. The tap water starts running green; the judge for the wedding is late; and one guest appears with a green splodge on her shirt. Meanwhile the bride disappears to help out one of their former maids. The outside world is getting closer to their upper class bubble.
It’s not long before the bubble bursts and some outsiders splattered in green climb over the walls surrounding their property, symbolic of the wealth divide. At this point everything suddenly goes mad as the security guards turn on the wealthy family and start raiding the house for valuables alongside the home invaders. It’s not particularly clear who the invaders are, but from who they’re targeting it seems like it’s an anti-rich uprising. From this point on the film descends into nihilistic chaos that reminded me of Todd Phillips Joker. It’s not really clear what the nihilism is supposed to represent besides a vague: rich are bad, and the poor victimized and it’s never really clear why everything is happening. As a result, the second half comes across as a bit sensationalist and provocative and without too much depth to back up the action.
If you’d like to see some Mexican political movies with a bit more depth check out the satirical critique of Mexican politics in Luis Estrada’s The Perfect Dictatorship, and the horrifyingly real nihilism in Amat Escalante’s Heli. There’s also Children of Menand Sons of Denmarkif you want to watch some more chaotic near future dystopian movies.
Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.
If you’re a secret fan of love triangles but actually an art-house film snob, Paris 13th District is for you. You have your art-house credentials, with Jacques Audiard directing and Celine Sciamma writing, as well as a smooth black and white film. But you also have a light, free-flowing script with lots of sex that doesn’t slow down, making it an easy watch for anyone wanting to tune out.
Paris 13th District isn’t deep. There doesn’t appear to be any hidden subtext to either of the character’s narratives. Some of the scenes even feel a little contrived, particularly the scene in a university lecture hall in which all of the students start watching videos of a chat room girl and making fun of Nora for looking just like her. In an otherwise relatable film of 20-30 somethings, this scene stands out – making you think that the writers might actually be a bit out of touch with the young adult’s reality. But luckily the depth isn’t needed thanks to the lightness of the film. It flows so smoothly that you won’t have time to think about why it was made.
The lightness comes from a range of things. Firstly, there’s the clean simplicity of the black and white film that takes away any noise. This is supported by the simple soundtrack with synth bursts that cleanly separate the breaks between each narrative. Secondly, there’s the free characters. Even though each one has their own problems – Emilie has family drama, Nora is bullied, and Camille has his own grief – they never feel serious. Instead they appear free to do anything they like – each one quickly changes their career as if it were starting a new day. Camillie suddenly becomes a real-estate agent after dropping out of his masters, Nora starts her law degree in her 30’s before dropping out to rejoin a career in sales, and Emilie doesn’t even feel burdened to work. Their free-flowing careers comes across as a bit of a jab at millennials from the older screenwriters of the film. All of them are played as fragile characters that change their mind and lack commitment. However, it does make the film feel lighter – they all live in a city in which their troubles don’t feel that serious and in which they can change their direction in an instant.
So if you’re looking for a light relationship drama with art-house credentials, Paris 13th District is worth a watch. Whilst it’s arguably a bit out of touch, it is an easy watch for anyone looking for a break from the more challenging film festival fare.
Head to our AFI Fest 2021 Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2021.
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.
Medusa is another genre-bending movie set in contemporary Brazil (see Bacurau, Good Manners, Executive Order, or Divine Love) that corresponds with the rise in the far right and radical Christianity in Brazil. The focus of this film is on how the patriarchy is upheld by radical Christian women
In modern day Brazil, a woman watches a sexy music video of a woman dancing on her way home on the night bus. When she gets off, she’s tailed by a gang of masked women. She tries to escape, but can’t. They gang up on her, beat her up, and force her to swear fealty to Jesus and to become a good Christian woman.
The attackers are Mariana and her female friends from the local evangelical church. Their horror-genre influenced masks are obviously intimidating. However, behind the mask they’re even more sinister. Instead of carrying faces that show years of trauma and fear they carry pristine smiles and clean pastel clothes. They look like a group of preppy high-school girls and not like your typical group of thugs. Their smiles and matching identity give them a cold collective assuredness that their violence is right and justified, when it isn’t. It also highlights a lack of individuality stemming from the strict codes of their social bubble – no one wants to stand out for fear of being identified with the other, so they all try to one-up each other in their devotional acts in order to maintain their social position. They’ve already started beating up people in the street, so what are they capable of next?
The design of the film makes it clear Mariana is brainwashed by her bubble of existence. The church she attends with her friends is flavored with hypnotizing 80’s music and dystopian neon lights and features coordinated song and dance routines that make them look robotic. Plus the microphone holding, slick talking, smartly dressed preacher gives off hints of snake oil salesmen before we see his ‘miracles.’ The whole radical Christian experience is designed to indoctrinate Mariana and her friends. Plus as a reward, they get friends like them, and corresponding male counterparts in the beefy ‘Watchmen’ group that attends their same church.
Problem is they can’t control everything in their own lives. They’re still victims to the patriarchy that plays them – both represented in the male religious pastor they fervently follow and the male ‘Watchmen’ they’re expected to date and marry. They can either continue to live for the radical Christian patriarchy and stay in their bubble, or break free by expanding their bubble until it pops.
Head to our AFI Fest 2021 Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2021.
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