Film Festival Coverage Hub - Reviews & Recaps

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.

Kijiji Changu (My Village) – Pan African Film Festival 2020

Kijiji Changu focuses on the relationship between two very different best friends Makame and Saidi. Saidi is a young playboy. He doesn’t have a steady job but is quick to give away what he has to get any of the local women in his bed. In contrast, Makame has already grown up. He fishes to earn money for his family and is already married and trying to conceive a child. The only strife in his life is that his mum and wife Maryam don’t get along, because his wife hasn’t given her a grandchild. However, when Maryam sleeps with Makame’s best friend Saidi in a desperate attempt to conceive, she becomes pregnant. But, whilst it saves her marriage and pleases her mother in law, it proves to have disastrous consequences.

From the sound of it, Kijiji Changu should have a lot of drama. There’s adultery, promiscuity, and rivalries between a wife and her mother in law and two best friends. However, Kijiji Changu fails to translate any of this drama to the screen due to a lack of narrative focus and a repetitive soundtrack.

Firstly, the story is unfocused. The film begins by setting up the brotherly relationship between Makame and Saidi. In some scenes they’re best friends and others worst enemies, but it kind of makes sense, as after all, they are very different characters. The plot slowly moves on with Makame and Saidi being friends, then not talking, friends, then not talking, even after Saidi sleeps with Maryam. The adulterous act is a prime opportunity to spark some fire into their love triangle relationship, but instead of developing the drama, the film loses focus. Instead of wondering how his wife had got pregnant when he hasn’t been with her in the whole film, Makame blindly celebrates the news that Maryam is pregnant. The film then fades out and returns to the village 9 months later in which the focus of the film switches to a story about HIV. In doing so, the character rivalries the initial hour built up are pushed to the side.

Secondly, the repetitive soundtrack messes with the emotional tone of the film by playing the same song to very different visual scenes. For example, the same song is played when Saidi seduces a woman as when the mother in law scratches her tongue at Maryam, and when one man enters the hospital. Each of these three scenes should elicit a different emotional response from the audience, but because the same musical piece backs each of them, the tone is muted. Soundtracks usually guide our emotional response by matching the same music to scenes which share similar emotions visually. However, in this case, the soundtrack doesn’t always match the visual emotions which confuses how we are meant to perceive the film.

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

Nasir – AFI Fest 2020

This film portrays a day in the life of Nasir, a Muslim tailor in Tamil-Nadu, one of India’s Southern states. It doesn’t shy away from the mundane, as it takes time to show Nasir go about his everyday tasks. We see him wash, eat, sleep, chat, and work. The aim is to portray Nasir as an ordinary Indian man. Just like everyone else, he’s burdened by life’s necessities.

The only thing that might stand out about him is that he’s a bit of a poet. He makes up poetry in his head and recites it to his colleagues and is shot walking around with his inner thoughts voiced over in the narrative. There’s also a few long takes of Nasir’s face in close up as he’s resting by an aquarium. These long takes force us to notice him thinking or day dreaming, to add a thoughtfulness to his character. It further adds to the construction of Nasir as an ordinary nice guy, humbly living his life.

The director sets up Nasir’s humble life to contrast with the threatening rise of Hindu nationalism in the background. It’s first heard on the market loudspeakers when Nasir walks his wife to the bus station. Then we hear his boss talking about the upcoming Hindu festival and how they need to get rid of the Muslims. It’s clear the Islamophobic sentiment is getting stronger and becoming more outspoken. Nasir seems to be oblivious of this, partly because the director protects him from it with a much narrower aspect ratio than your standard widescreen. It keeps him and his humble life as the focus and keeps the threatening presence of Hindu nationalism out of the screen.

Nasir is a humble look at one person trying to live a humble life amidst rising nationalism.

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

I Carry You With Me – AFI Fest 2020

I Carry You With Me is an epic cross generational, border crossing love story that hops between Puebla in Mexico and New York in the USA. It’s shot across three time periods: the present in NY, the past in Puebla, and the distant past reflected in childhood memories. The majority of the film takes place in the middle where Ivan and Gerardo meet. It contains the bulk of the film’s emotion and narrative. However, the cuts to the present imbue it with nostalgia by situating it in the past. It makes it feel like a dream period for the couple that contrasts with the uncertainty of their lives in the present.

The style also contributes to the dream like qualities of the middle period. Like Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, Heidi Ewing uses a lot of color filters to imbue warmth and feeling to I Carry You With Me. Instead of warm reds and oranges, there’s greens, oranges, and blues that create a world that feels unique and special. It captures the excitement of their romance. Also like In The Mood for Love, there’s food. A plate of Chile en Nogada replaces a bowl of hot steaming noodles. Chile en Nogada being one of Puebla and Mexico’s most iconic dishes and one that is notoriously hard to make. It both situates their romance and symbolizes their love.

The portrayal of Puebla also challenges the typical American Dream narrative presented in U.S.-Mexico films. It depicts a Mexican city full of warmth, beauty, and life to contrast with the lonely, bleak, coldness of New York. In this film, the U.S. is not the land of opportunity that it is often depicted to be. Instead of leaving to escape poverty, they leave for the opportunity to start a new life.

I Carry You With Me is not without it’s own cliches. There’s the gay guy with the female best friend and another who’s best friend is a flamboyant drag queen. Then there’s the haunting memories of the first time their fiercely patriarchal families put them down. Obviously not all families in Mexico are like this, and whilst I don’t doubt these events happened to the real Ivan and Gerardo, they feel like exploitative throw in scenes designed to evoke sympathy and emotion. However, despite the cliches,I Carry You With Me is a brilliantly romantic portrayal of generation and border crossing love.

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

Ekoua – Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) 2020

Ekoua is an ambitious animated dystopian film from Cote d’Ivoire featuring a Hero’s Journey story which unfortunately loses itself in exposition.

Visually, the 3D animation looks like it’s still in the development stage. Many animated objects are incomplete or forgotten about, such as a waiter carrying a tray with her arms by her side. More objects unnaturally cross spatial boundaries, such as a the baby’s legs blending into the crib it’s lying in when they move.

There’s also an unnecessary amount of shots in which characters are traveling from A to B either by walking or in cars. These shots are usually lengthened either side of the shot to show characters frozen still before and after they’ve started traveling. It adds time to a film which doesn’t need it. It reminded me of watching someone play a long game of Sims.

You could fault the criticisms above on a lack of funding or animated capabilities. Animated African films are rare compared to the number of animated films produced in North America and Asia. Ekoua is an ambitious attempt at creating a new dystopian world through animation. However, even with the limited animation capabilities, a complex storyline makes Ekoua hard to love.

At the start of the film, Ekoua sets itself up as a potential satire by introducing a dystopian world ruled by scammers. However, the scammer dystopia set up in the opening is never explained. The only scammers we see are two brightly dressed men that make it rain in clubs, and suspiciously keep following Ekoua for no apparent reason. Instead of exploring the scammer dystopia, Ekoua alters direction to follow a narrative of Ekoua becoming a ‘seer’ and eliminating an evil baby.

From there the film felt like a slow crazy dream. Here’s an outline of a portion of the plot I understood:

Ekoua becomes a seer thanks to an elder.
She has a vision that informs her that her neighbors newborn baby is an evil spirit reincarnated and that she must eliminate it to avoid repeating the same mistakes her mum made.
Scammers chase Ekoua and beat her up.
Ekoua takes the evil baby.
Royal police show up and guide Ekoua to the capital with the evil baby.
A band of mutated hyenas led by a mutant elephant named Koffi stop them and steal the baby.
Ekoua tracks the band of mutants to their hideout and recovers the baby.
Ekoua and the royal policeman move on to the capital.

Then the plot gets confusing.

Overall, Ekoua could do with a bit more simplicity. The story has a lot of different strands (scammer world, Ekoua’s mum, visions, hero’s journey) that make it hard to follow. With a more focused script and more budget to improve the animation, Ekoua would instantly improve.