Welcome to our hub for Film Festival coverage on FilmRoot. Please find direct links below to our most recently covered Film Festivals including reviews and recaps.
Immerse yourself in the patriarchy embedded in a traditional family in Lahore, Pakistan with Joyland. Don’t let the upbeat title mislead you. Whilst there are some warm moments in Haider’s queer coming of age story, his awakening is framed as a privilege of his gender. The women are all victims of the patriarchy whether they’re within the family house or outside it.
Despite being confined to a wheelchair, the grandfather is still the head of the household consisting of his two sons and their wives, as well as his eldest son’s many children. Haider, the youngest son, holds the focus of the first half of the film as he transitions from a house husband supporting his wife, to a husband seeing other women and turning his wife into a house-wife. The focus on Haider is representative of the patriarchal society he exists within. The audience initially sympathizes with him because he’s looked down on by the men of his family for his assumption of traditionally female role. Because of this set up, his queer coming of age is celebrated as it feels like he’s finally able to come out of his shell. The focus on his budding romance with his boss are some of the happiest moments of the film. However, in the second half of the film, his queer coming of age is framed as his male privilege.
Whilst Haider is out finding himself, his wife, Mumtaz, has been forced by Haider’s family to resign from her dream job and assume the domestic responsibilities expected of a wife. Simultaneously her narrative is overshadowed by Haider’s. Her screen time slowly diminishes as Haider’s grows. Even her star entrepreneurial scene from the start of the movie – in which she uses phone flash-lights to complete her job during a blackout – is hijacked by her husband when he pulls the same trick for his crush later in the film. Mumtaz’s repression by the patriarchy is represented in the empathy and upbeat scenes that are given to her husband, at the expense of hers.
Joyland is a technically faultless film – something you’d expect from a Cannes winner – and captures the dynamics of the patriarchy in Pakistan perfectly. However, whilst its Queer Palm win promises a progressive or unique portrayal of Queerness, Joyland doesn’t really stretch any boundaries here. Haider’s relationship with Biba, the only queer relationship in the film, is sacrificed for a melodramatic finale. Her role, whilst played brilliantly, mostly exists to be the exotic temptress for Haider’s macho-turn.
Sonia is a precocious 8-year-old girl with a vibrant imagination. Her flashbacks and surreal flights of fancy help her navigate life as the daughter of Papi, a drug dealer who returns from New York to become the biggest crime lord in the city.
For a first time feature, Noelia Quintero Herencia captures the slightly zany tone of Rita Indiana’s novel very well. She creates 8 year-old Sonia’s world by depicting her imagined fantasies alongside her reality. Doing this makes it harder for the viewer to figure out which scenes are real, making Sonia a pretty unreliable narrator. However, it also paints an interesting picture of her relationship with her dad.
Her two main fantasies consist of her leading a TV game show and spending time with her dad in the U.S. Both feel upbeat and happy, deliberately contrasting with her lonely reality at home. However, they both contain her dad’s vices – vices that at her age she’s just becoming aware of, such as her father’s infidelity and life as a criminal.
Her fantasies capture her changing perception of her dad as she grows up. She still imagines him as her hero, and herself as his princess, in a way that feels like she’s trying to hold onto her happy childhood memories. However, coming to terms with his criminal character, represents the end of her childhood alongside her idyllic childhood fantasies.
For an imaginative coming of age story that leans heavily on visualizing a kid’s imagination, Papi is well worth a watch.
Head to our LALIFF 2021 Hub for more reviews from the 20th edition of LALIFF.
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.
Los Angeles has a lot of film festivals. Most have a focus: PAFF focuses on Pan African films, Outfest focuses on LGBTQ+ films, and LA Shorts Fest focuses on short films. AFI Fest stands out as the city’s biggest general film festival. Like a TIFF, Berlinale, or London Film Festival, AFI Fest screens exemplary movies from around the world in addition to showcase galas and premieres. AFI Fest 2020 was no exception.
However, 2020 has not been a normal year and because of it, AFI Fest’s 2020 edition was not a normal festival. Instead of taking place in Hollywood, AFI Fest 2020, like many other 2020 film festivals, took place virtually online with the TV and computer screens replacing the big screen. So whilst we can’t give you an overview of the audiences and location like we’ve previously done for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and Pan African Film Festival, we can give you an overview of the experience and the films from AFI Fest 2020.
The Experience
One immediate plus of the virtual film festival format was that there was no waiting. Instead of queuing up before each screening and running between theaters to cram in as much as possible, all you had to do was click a few buttons from your couch. You could have watched 5 films a day and still have had enough time to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner, before an early night. The only gripe I had was that the staggered release of the movies over the course of the festival, which meant you still had to create a film schedule to make sure you didn’t miss anything. AFI Fest 2020 could have fully embraced the virtual format by making everything available throughout the festival to fully cater to the audience. That being said, although it was shame these films couldn’t be seen on the big screen, the overall transition to virtual worked perfectly.
The Films
AFI Fest 2020 championed its diversity from the first press release. Of the 124 films included in the festval, 53% were directed by women, 39% by BIPOC, and 17% by LGBTQ+. There was a decent representation of most of the world too. The Americas and Europe were strongly represented, and there was also a good representation from Asia. However, like SBIFF 2020, AFI Fest 2020 contained little from Africa and Australasia, with just 2 feature films and 1 short from Sub-Saharan Africa, and none from Australasia outside of Australia and New Zealand. It’s not that these parts of the world aren’t making films, as the Pan African Film Festival demonstrated. It’s that they’re often overlooked.
The quality of the films at AFI Fest 2020 was high. There weren’t too many premieres, but there were a lot of great films picked from the year’s biggest festivals. I can happily say that all of the 17 films I saw were worth a watch. Here’s how they stacked up.
After seeing Mohammad Rasoulof’s A Man of Integrityfor the first time earlier this year and seeing him win the Golden Bear, I had high expectations for There is No Evil. Safe to say my expectations weren’t disappointed.
The Runner Up: 2
In a very close second is the immaculate Nasir. It’s a humble day in the life story that is beautifully written, shot, and acted.
The Multiple Perspectives: 3-8
All of these films are very good. 5 out of the 6 follow multiple protagonists to give the movies a more rounded perspective. The only one that doesn’t is The Intruder and it’s much more intriguing and uncertain as a result. I Carry You With Me, Farewell Amor, and Eyimofe are all relationship dramas that center on visa and immigration issues. My Little Sister and Downstream to Kinshasa both focus on grief and trauma – the former a family drama, the latter a protest documentary.
The Originals: 9-10
Both these films are framed around unique concepts which provide a lot of room for analysis. Tragic Jungle uses a Mayan myth whilst Apples uses an epidemic of memory loss.
The Foreigner’s Transformation: 11-12
Should the Wind Dropand Luxor are two warm films that I really liked. Whilst the foreigner’s transformation isn’t my favorite topic, they both worked very well. They both create location well too with one representing Nagorno-Karabakh and the other the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor.
The Artistic: 13-14
Notturno and Piedra Sola are amazingly shot. Between them they probably contain the best images of all the films I saw. The only problem was that these incredible images didn’t necessarily translate into a complete story.
The Rest: 15-17
Rival and She Paradise were both good movies. Rival was just a bit too bleak for me, and She Paradise didn’t hit the expectations I had from the short. New Order also opened well before descending into nihilistic chaos. I’m sure it will have it’s fans just like Todd Phillip’s Joker.
Conclusion
As Los Angeles’ premiere film festival, AFI Fest is unmissable if you’re a film fan living in the city. Whilst other festivals in the city choose a focus, AFI fest screens everything. This means you’ll get to see the best films from around the world, hand selected from the festival circuit. Every film offers something that makes it worth taking the time to watch.
Ayinla is inspired by the life of Apala music legend Ayinla Omowura. Set in 1970s Abeokuta, the film charts his rise in the local, national, and international music scenes and the tribulations and ultimate tragedy that accompany his fiery character.
Whilst this film is a dramatized story about Ayinla, it starts with a number of home-video style interviews from local politicians and his friends. These are all real people talking, not actors, and their interviews are used to set up the importance of Ayinla. He’s an artist whose renown never hit the astronomical highs of Fela Kuti or King Sunny Ade, but with these interviews and the dramatized story of his life, director, and fellow Abeokuta resident, Tunde Kelani shows he’s worthy of international recognition.
The highlight of Ayinla is the music. Whilst not all of the lyrics are subtitled, you can tell that Ayinla was a playful and political lyricist from the songs that are. They’re all cut into the movie pretty smoothly and give the film the star soundtrack to promote his legacy. Kelani also shoots Abeokuta beautifully, making it appear to be a picturesque tropical city with greenery and Ulumo Rock dominating the drone shots. Another plus is that the entire film is shot in Yoruba, staying true to the region the film is based in, instead of opting for English in an attempt to appeal to an international audience.
The only downsides of this movie is that it doesn’t feel complete. It feels more like a bunch of episodes of Ayinla’s life that have been pieced together. The only thin plot-line is that of Ayinla preparing for his trip to London, but even this only begins to guide the story in the final part of the movie. As pointed out by Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku for afrocritik the film also introduces a lot of plot points that are never developed – such as Ayinla’s pregnant wife. Luckily the music for the most part covers up for the lack of plot.
For anyone into Nigerian music, or biopic style movies on making it in the music industry, Ayinla is worth a watch. It’s a decent tribute to both Ayinla Omowura and Abeokuta, the colorful city that both the director and the music star share.
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