Film Festival Coverage Hub - Reviews & Recaps

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Best Films imagineNATIVE: 5 of the Best from imagineNATIVE 2021

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is an international hub for the presentation and celebration of Indigenous media art. It’s the largest festival of its kind in the world and plays a crucial role in providing a platform for Indigenous artists to reclaim their voices and express their own perspectives (as the vast majority of films about Indigenous peoples are made by non-Indigenous filmmakers). The Festival’s 6 days featured a range of great Indigenous storytelling from stop-motion animation to polished dystopian sci-fi movies. Here are 5 of our favorite films – feature length and short – that we caught for the 2021 edition of the imagineNATIVE film festival.

5 of our Best Films from imagineNATIVE Film Festival

Angakusajaujuq – The Shaman’s Apprentice

Zacharius Kunuk, the World’s most famous Inuit filmmaker, is back with something completely new: his first stop motion animated film. In which, an apprentice travels with her grandmother into the underworld in search of a cure for an ailing community member. The brief glimpse into another realm is on the level of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth with its eery dark spirits. However, we never feel lost thanks to the comforting guidance of the apprentice’s grandmother.

Tote Abuelo

Another film featuring a grandparent-granddaughter relationship is Tzotzil filmmaker Maria Sojob’s Tote Abuelo. In her debut feature, Maria returns to her ancestral home in Chiapas to reconnect with her estranged grandfather. The slow pace of the documentary matches both the slow straw-hat making process, as well as Maria’s patient questioning. Her conversation with her grandfather slowly opens up stories of her ancestors and treatment of her people in Southern Mexico – allowing her to carry on the history of her family.

Hiama

If you love movies which feature school-kids getting revenge on their bullies, Hiama is for you. The star decides to embrace her Hiama (shamanic guardian spirit) in a weirdly empowering horror-filled climax. No settler-colonialists have an answer for this.

Run Woman Run

If you’re looking for a movie that feels like a mug of hot chocolate, Run Woman Run is the most heart-warming film we saw at imagineNATIVE. It follows Beck, a single mum, that sees visions of historic runner Tom Longboat who works to inspire her to get back on her feet following a diabetic coma. Her journey is emotional: she’s recovering from generational and intergenerational trauma to get her family back together. But it’s also full of humor – helped by Beck’s lazy college student attitude – and even has a few rom-com moments.

Night Raiders

Night Raiders is an awesome take on the dystopian sci-fi genre. Like in Children of Men, seeing children in Night Raiders’ dystopia is rare as they’re all considered property of the state and institutionalized into schools to be indoctrinated into the regime. After years of evading the state, Niska loses her 11 year old daughter to the modern reincarnation of the residential schools system and has to team up with a bunch of Indigenous outcasts to rescue her and their community.

For more news on upcoming Indigenous films, follow imagineNATIVE online or keep track of upcoming events on their website. Also for more of our Film Festival coverage head to our Film Festival hub.

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Softie (Kenya) Pan African Film Festival 2021

Boniface “Softie” Mwangi was drawn to political activism during his time photographing the post election violence in 2007. Now, he’s running for office in a regional Kenyan election. To succeed, he has to radically change a democracy tainted by corruption, violence, and mistrust. This documentary follows his journey as he campaigns to reform Kenyan politics whilst struggling to hold his family together.

Unlike other political documentaries like Knock Down the House and The Great Hack where Western viewers might have a bit of familiarity with the focus (the Democratic “Blue Wave” of the 2018 House elections and the Cambridge Analytica controversy respectively), Softie’s story is unknown. Western media rarely covers the political protests and uprisings in Africa – especially sub-Saharan Africa where pro-U.S. dictators reside. Therefore, Softie has to do a bit more than these other films to get you up to speed with Kenyan politics. Luckily Boniface’s life is a kind of awakening to the national political situation, so this is covered within his story – his life as a photographer led him to political activism, and his political activism led him to run in the elections. The filmmakers concisely fill in the gaps – British colonialism creating a nation governed by tribalism – to flesh out a more complete picture.

The majority of Softie takes place during his campaign for office. It documents a lot of the day to day tasks of campaigning much like Kazuhiro Soda’s Campaign – from handing out flyers and greeting locals to securing funds to keep it going. However it’s not quite as focused on just the campaign, as we also follow Boniface’s wife (Njeri) and children on a personal level as they bounce between Kenya and the U.S. to escape death threats. It feels like we have almost unrestricted access to both Boniface and Njeri’s personal lives. Boniface first tells Njeri of his goal to run for office on camera (her reaction gives that away) and we’re often closer to Njeri and their children in the U.S. than Boniface is in Kenya making it feel like we know their emotions better than their other halves. It almost feels like we’re the relationship mediator between them at times. This personal, emotional layer emphasizes the challenges of trying to build a family whilst focused on your career, allowing us to empathize with them much more.

The other negative plus that Softie has on the U.S. political documentaries is that the political situation in Kenya is more immediately dangerous than those in Knock Down the House and The Great Hack. Boniface’s life always feels in danger of being extinguished by his political rivals, as journalists and people linked to the voting systems are murdered whilst his story is told. The higher stakes make this film more urgent and tense. It sometimes feels like we’re watching a hagiography of someone that will be martyred.

If you’re looking for an observational documentary that follows a political activist trying to change a corrupt system by running for government and the effects this has on their family, Softie is the film for you.

Check back to our Pan African Film Festival 2021 page for more reviews coming out of the 29th edition of the festival.

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Geographies of Solitude – AFI Fest 2022

Geographies of Solitude has many impressive shots of Nova Scotia’s Sable Island, a remote island almost 200 miles off the Canadian coast in the Atlantic Ocean. It starts with one of the most memorable shots, a night sky with more stars than you’ve likely ever seen in the sky before. The sheer number of stars makes the shot appear like an impressionistic painting, and the light is so bright, you even get to see a very clear silhouette of a person walking across the horizon. It’s an almost ASMR-type experience watching the opening with its complimentary ambient soundscape. It feels like you could watch the whole film without dialogue as the images and sound lull you into a trance, that it’s a surprise when there’s speech and we’re introduced to Zoe.

Zoe has been living on the island for over 40 years, mostly alone. We follow her as she explores the 12 square mile island every day to log any changes in the environment. She carries a kit with sampling pots and a notepad to capture anything new and log anything different she might see. Some days she might find a dead bird and on others she might encounter a new insect she hasn’t seen before, however, most days are repetitive logging exercises that track very small changes on the island. Despite the beautiful remote location, Zoe’s existence feels very monotonous and lonely.

The filmmaker, Jacquelyn Mills, takes the filmmaking to similarly exhaustive levels. Almost everything is shot using 16mm film, some of which is processed with a variety of experimental methods such as with peat, yarrow, and seaweed. Mills also pushes the soundtrack to the extreme with insect inspired melodies – literally music created to the steps of the local bugs. Both fit the subject of the documentary, as the experimental filmmaking matches Zoe’s own scientific experiments. However, the experimenting feels too exhaustive. There’s so much experimenting, it feels like the point of the experiments in the first place has been forgotten.

There’s a moment near the end of Geographies of Solitude in which Zoe questions the meaning of her own life. Her answer is a little melancholic as she seems to express doubt about her choice to live on the island for 40 years. She wonders if she’s stretched her life too long on the island and spent too much time away from everything else. The film feels a bit similar. The filmmakers have gone to extraordinary levels to make something unique – soaking film in peat and making music from bugs, but like Zoe’s endless logging, what is the point. Despite the beautiful location and beautiful shots, Geographies of Solitude is imbued with a melancholy for the futility of it all.

Head to our AFI Fest 2022 Hub for more reviews from AFI Fest 2022.

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The 2020 Pan African Film Festival (PAFF)

The largest Black film festival in the United States has officially started. So get your ‘PAFF-port’ ready because the Pan African Film Festival is set to take you around the world without jumping on a plane. With a record breaking 225 Black films representing 52 countries in 26 different languages, PAFF is the largest Black film festival in the United States.

I’ll be trying to catch as many of the African films as I can to review for the site, so be sure to keep checking back here to get the lowdown. As with SBIFF, I’ll also aim to write up a recap of everything at the end to let you know what you missed out on.

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Executive Order – Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival 2021

Executive Order starts in the court room as Antonio, a young black lawyer fights a case for reparations for Afro-Brazilians. Meanwhile, a number of Brazilian news reporters live stream footage of an old black lady entering the department of state to collect the very first reparations payment in the country. However, just as you think this is going to be a utopia from the positive start, the government officials turn the old lady away, kicking off a downward cycle of police presence and prejudice against Afro-Brazilians.

The cases of blatant and behind-closed-doors racism that the director presents don’t feel too surprising. The scenes – such as the one featuring the racist man in the bar – feel carbon copies of similar scenes documenting racist events from Hollywood movies. Neither is the descent of the country into a dystopian fascist state that forcibly deports all people with African blood back to Africa as we’ve already seen bleak dystopias on screen in The Handmaid’s Tale. However, the surprising part is that it’s mostly presented in a pretty upbeat manner. The music, colorful pictures, and light banter between the main characters matches the light tone of a Spike Lee neighborhood film. It gives the film a gospel-ish feel – that despite all the terrible things going on, there’s still hope for the Afro-Brazilian characters. Maybe it would have been too hard to see this film without the upbeat tone considering the current state of Brazilian politics. So instead of being a gritty, depressing film, Executive Order is a palatable Hollywood-style dystopian drama that allows space for a few laughs at the absurdity of the white supremacist state.

Whilst it could have been more ‘radical’ and a bit less obvious, it’s good to see a light hearted drama that anyone can watch and enjoy tackle rarely mentioned topics like reparations on the big screen.

Head to our LALIFF 2021 Hub for more reviews from the 20th edition of LALIFF.