Film Festival Coverage Hub - Reviews & Recaps

Stitches – International Competition – SBIFF

In Stitches, a mother restarts her own investigation into the death of her newborn son 18 years ago. She believes he was stolen from her and that he’s potentially still alive. However, she has to also prove the police, her friends, and her family that she’s not insane.

The film spends most of its run time following the mother’s investigation. While she’s investigating, the audience also has to figure out if she’s crazy or not. She’s not the most engaging or sympathetic of characters as she doesn’t say anything to her family or friends. Her face is always blank and emotionless. We can only start to sympathise with her when her investigations are vindicated in some of the records she uncovers.

From that point on, the way she has to try to convince her family and friends of the truths she’s uncovered follows the routine of horror films:

The main character knows something the audience doesn’t.
The audience learns/sees something which makes them understand the main character.
The main character struggles to convince her friends and family.
Eventually, they prove something to a close family member or friend.
That friend or family member shows/convinces everyone else.

However, unfortunately there few things that let down the film for me. Firstly, I was never sold on the main character. Her face is expressionless for the whole film, making her hard to sympathise with or care about. Her actions and movements in contrast to her blank expression were always very obvious and rigid, which made them appear forced and unnatural, drawing attention to her role as an actor.

Secondly, it would have been good to have more background about the mother. it’s not clear why the lady starts the film so depressed all of a sudden. 18 years have passed, so why is she not talking to her daughter and suddenly so concerned to find her missing son again. It would also be good to know why she was put into a mental asylum and how she managed to get out and reintegrate herself into her family and society.

Lastly, I found the editing and cinematography of Stitches a bit off-putting. There were a lot of scenes with one character in clear focus with everything in the background blurred. In itself this works, but these shots were often cut with mid range shots where everything was in focus, making the editing feel a bit disjointed.

Overall Stitches covered an interesting story, but because of the hard to sympathise with feature character, I never got fully engaged in her investigation.

Subira – Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) 2020

Subira is a well meaning film about a black Muslim girl from a small coastal town that is sold off into marriage to an Indian man in the city. However unfortunately it’s let down by a desire to create a happy ending at all costs.

Subira is her fathers favorite child. He takes her out to sea with him and lets her play with her friends in the street. In contrast, her mother wants her to stay in the house and stay away from boys to prepare her for a good marriage. So it’s no surprise that when her father dies in a freak accident, she’s married off quickly to a rich Indian man from Nairobi.

Life in Nairobi is completely different to her life living along the coast. Nairobi is a suffocating urban environment, which the director emphasizes through the high rise buildings, cafes full of people, and private rooms. In her husband’s home she’s also expected to cook, sew, and take care of the house overseen by her husband’s uncle. Her new strict uncle-in-law and the unfamiliar environment work together to build her longing for her dead father and her past freedoms at home. Forbidden to leave the house without permission, she starts to covertly attend swimming classes in the city to get closer to her sea-faring father.

When she’s found taking swimming lessons behind her husband’s back, Subira escapes the wrath of her uncle and husband by running back to her home by the sea. Her escape is her liberation. At home she can be who she wants without having to fulfill her husband or uncle’s expectations. Ending the film with her escape would have been a victory for an independent woman fighting against a fiercely patriarchal society.

Instead, the film keeps going, intent on securing a ‘happy ending’ between Subira and her husband. The problem is, the director doesn’t give the audience any reason to expect the husband will change. When Subira leaves, he screens all of her calls, and doesn’t try to do anything to win her back. He expects her to return, after all he is the man who picked her out of poverty to share his wealth. Ultimately, Subira is the one leading the attempts to get back together, which I felt undermined her choice to run away and liberate herself. It’s a well-meaning happy ending, but it would have been more powerful if she had chosen her own independence.

The Retirement – Latin American Competition – SBIFF

This is an Argentinian take of the ‘grumpy old man facing an unwanted situation that forces him to open up his heart’ story. In this case, it’s a old man entering retirement as a widow who wants to be left alone. However, his housekeeper disappears leaving him to look after her young son.

He faces a lot of opposition from his daughter in his choice to take care of the kid on behalf of his housekeeper. The way he spoils him makes his daughter jealous – he’s being the dad she didn’t get have because he was so obsessed with work. As per convention, the grumpy old man learns to love the young boy and opens himself up to learn to love his daughter again.

It’s a heartwarming film about retirement and life as an old widow. Perfect if you don’t want to think much. However, if you’re looking for something more than a film about grumpy old man that is forced to open his heart, you’ll probably be disappointed. The tropes are mostly obvious and expected. And when they’re not, they feel out of place and manipulative – such as the mum going into labour at the kids school (giving Rodolfo an opportunity to show his caring side to his daughter). It’s careful not to tread new territory. Although to be fair, this mid-range silver cinema fare is being budgeted out of Hollywood cinema these days.

Head to our Santa Barbara International Film Festival Hub for more reviews from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2020.

Gonarezhou: The Movie – Pan African Film Festival 2020

Gonarezhou: The Movie is a rags to riches crime story of one man rising from poverty into one of the most wanted poachers in Zimbabwe. It’s a valiant effort on a small budget (approximately $12,000) but is let down by clichés and unconvincing characters.

The film starts with an impressive panoramic shot of a group of soldiers aiming their assault rifles at a man running across the dried banks of a river with a wall of red cliffs on the other side of the river. In the next scene, the same man is strapped up to an IV in a hospital bed. His nurse turns off the radio when the host starts talking about illegal poaching – obviously a sore subject – but the man asks her to put it back on. As soon as the radio host asks for people to share their opinions about the poaching business, our bed-bound man calls in and offers to tell his story. But the radio host is having none of it, telling him to talk to his producers or write a letter… that is until the man reveals that he is Zulu.

From this point the film flashes back to tell Zulu’s story from living in poverty to becoming one of the country’s leading poachers. It’s a story with a lot of unfortunate clichés: Zulu’s mum dies leaving him alone, he’s a struggling artist that gives up on his dreams, a chance meeting sets him up with a crime lord who offers to save him from the gutter, and he falls in love with a prostitute. Ultimately, Zulu joins the group of poachers because he wants to get to know the attractive prostitute he meets and slowly works himself up to being one of the country’s most wanted men.

However, Zulu’s rise to becoming one of the country’s most wanted men never feels convincing. Zulu is obviously not a criminal by nature as he appears meek and timid, mostly preferring to look at the ground rather than the eyes of whoever is talking to him. It feels more like Zulu walks into poaching because he doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t appear to be in it for the money as he never flaunts or talks about his new found wealth. It’s also hard to believe he poaches for the prostitute as he never looks excited, anxious, or sad when he is with or without her. Because he still looks poor, doesn’t hold any power, and doesn’t have any motivation it’s hard to understand why he poaches and why he’s seen as so dangerous.

The film could have done with a bit more build up. There aren’t any signs of a police investigation for Zulu or his colleagues and therefore it doesn’t feel like there’s any threat of Zulu being caught. In the end, the police stumble onto his tracks by chance and a cheap twist is used to try and create a tension which hasn’t been built up beforehand. If there had been signs of an investigation and signs that Zulu was a wanted man, it might have raised the stakes for the finale.

Gonarezhou: The Movie deserves credit for making a movie about illegal poaching and human trafficking: two topics that rarely make the big screen. However, unfortunately the film feels a bit flat because the stakes never feel high enough to keep you on the edge of your seats for the film. Partly because we already know half the ending from the opening (he lives), but more so because Zulu is never seen as a wanted man until the finale, leaving no time to build up tension.

Head to our Pan African Film Festival Hub for more reviews from PAFF 2020.

There is No Evil – AFI Fest 2020

There is No Evil is made to be provocative in both the story structure and the content. Each of the four stories contains a mystery: we have to ask who the main character is and what they have done? Revealing their identity and actions is provocative as it shows how they’re linked to capital punishment and mandatory military service. None of the characters are what they initially seem.

Likewise the content is provocative. As mentioned, each story is linked to the death penalty and mandatory military service. But not just one of the other, as often the mandatory military service requires you to enforce capital punishment. Regular citizens are expected to follow orders and pull the stool from under those citizens deemed worthy of death. The director focuses on this to show how encompassing authoritarian rule is in Iran, and how blindly some people follow it. By showing how the state forces you to commit the absolute highest crime for it’s benefit, the director reveals that there’s nothing some citizens wouldn’t do to facilitate the authoritarian government in Iran.

There is No Evil is split into four parts partly for political/logistical reasons. Director Mohammad Rasoulof is currently banned from filmmaking in Iran and breaking the film into shorts made it easier to hide his name from the permits and delegate. However, breaking the film up into four sections also helps to expand the perspective of the film. Instead of focusing on one family in one singular feature, the four parts show the range of people and lives the death penalty affects. We see those who resist and those that follow the law, as well as family members and friends who can’t escape it. It shows that everyone can be implicated.

Whilst it shows people from both sides, the film appears to favor those who resist. This is shown in the openness of the worlds in each short, especially when comparing the first short to the last. In the first, we follow a father governed by his routines. He follows rules and chastises his wife for forgetting to do things by the book. Despite being free to go wherever he wants, his world feels narrow and restricted. A lot of the time he’s inside either a car stuck in traffic, or in buildings, and he works in a windowless room far underground in artificial light. So whilst he’s not an outcast to society, his world feels limited and bleak. In contrast, the outcast in part four has escaped from Iranian society. He’s been forced to live off the land far from civilization because he resisted. But his world also feels more free for it. His story is full of natural light and wide expansive shots of the landscape. His world feels more free despite his political status because he stood up for what he believed in. His spiritual freedom is reflected in his bright world. In him, the director shows he favors those who resist.

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