Film Festival Coverage Hub - Reviews & Recaps

Black Mexicans – Pan African Film Festival 2020

In Black Mexicans, a fisherman splits his time between two women: his wife, Juana, and his lover Magdalena.

Neri, the fisherman, is an old Don Juan. He’s known in the community for his promiscuity, which doesn’t end with Juana and Magdalena. However, the film focuses on his two lovers and their two daughters of a similar age. Whilst Nero’s two families share similarities, they have different problems. Juana has Neri, but she’s dying from a terminal illness, whilst Magdalena lives waiting on Neri and the relationship with his wife to end. Magdalena isn’t hoping for Juana to die – she regularly donates blood and even offers her donating her liver to help her – but she does want clarity from her relationship with Neri so she can move on with her life.

The other difference between the two families is their wealth. Whilst neither family is wealthy, Magdalena at least has her health to continue earning money through her restaurant. She’s able to buy a new fridge, and isn’t too worried about Neri not being able to catch any fish. Her ability to earn money, also gives her daughter the freedom to do what she wants as she doesn’t have to help support the family. In contrast, Juana is too poorly to earn, and Neri can’t support them, so her daughter has to find work to keep them afloat. Juana’s daughter therefore doesn’t have the same freedoms as her step sister and resents her absent father more for it.

Black Mexicans is set along the picturesque Oaxaca coast within the Afro-Mexican community in Costa Chica. The remote and empty setting reflects the Afro-Mexican experience in Mexico. Just like Afro-Mexicans in Mexico, the setting is hidden away from the rest of Mexico. No one makes the effort to take the boat trip there, except for the rare pair of backpackers. There’s also no sign of any non-black Mexicans here, just as the Afro-Mexicans here are hidden away from the rest of Mexico. The empty beach chairs and beach restaurants show that people just don’t care about the Afro-Mexican community. It’s isolated enough to pretend it doesn’t exist and empty enough that it doesn’t attract any attention.

It’s no surprise then that the Juana’s daughters efforts to make a life for herself appear hopeless. Her father will always be promiscuous and forget about her, her mother is terminally ill, she’s in inescapable debt, and there’s no support from the government (as indicated when a highway policeman says she’s not Mexican on a rare trip outside the community). Without her mother she’s alone. Her hopelessness is expressed through her stoic expressions. She never smiles or frowns, and never appears disappointed or angry. She’s aware of the hopelessness of her situation and her inevitable prostitution to pay off her debts.

Black Mexicans is the first feature film that tries to depict the Afro-Mexican experience with an all Afro-Mexican cast. It does have its problems: some Afro-Mexicans have called out the stereotypical depictions and the ignorantly prejudiced comments of the director. However, separating the director from the film, Black Mexicans deserves credit for depicting a community invisible to the rest of Mexico. Well constructed images and storyline might remind you of Costa Rica’s Land of Ashes or Eve’s Bayou. It’s use of setting and the stoic character of Juana’s daughter highlight the lack of opportunity and support for the black community in Mexico and their exclusion from their Mexican identity.

Lane 4 – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Lane 4, Amanda is most comfortable in the water. Lacking her parents’ attention at home, swimming is the only thing she has. But she’s not alone in the pool. Priscila, the star of her swim team, becomes her friend and rival in the pool and in life.

The film starts with Amanda completely still, floating underwater in the fetal position in a swimming pool. By comparing the swimming pool to a womb, the opening image shows Amanda’s desire to return to the womb, to escape all the stresses of her daily life (see Freud’s Thanatos Instinct). In the pool, she can escape from her parents who don’t understand her, the social pressures of maintaining a ‘cool’ image, and her own growing pains. However, unfortunately for her, she cannot stay underwater forever. Eventually she has to surface for air. When she breaks from the fetal position and swims to the surface, it’s symbolic of her second birth. It’s her rebirth as a woman and a world full of expectations for her.

The scenes of Amanda underwater are the corner stones of Lane 4. Each one of them indicate her underlying desires. First, as mentioned above, she’s reborn from a girl into a woman, even though she desires to return to the simplicity of the womb. Secondly, she dives to the bottom of the pool on her own to reluctantly collect a hairband given to her by her mother. This image symbolizes her reluctance to grow up and tie back her hair – something that her mum thinks she should do to show off her ears. The third underwater scene shows her diving towards Priscila’s boyfriend. This scene starts to reveal her desire to assume Priscila’s position as the coolest girl on the swim team which are confirmed in the last underwater scene to end the film. Above water, Amanda is mostly silent and rarely reveals what she thinks, but underwater, she reveals all of her underlying desires and urges.

Lane 4 contains most of the typical coming of age film tropes, such as:

Dealing with absent parents.
Dealing with friends who have grown up before you.
Dealing with a dad that still sees you as a little girl.
Jealousy of the popular girl at school.
Wanting to go out with most attractive boy at school.
Her first period.

As a result, it will feel very familiar to other coming of age films, such as Alba. The main thing that sets apart Lane 4 from other films is that it’s set within a competitive swim club. This environment, and the underwater scenes that reveal her hidden desires, made Lane 4 one of the most memorable films at SBIFF.

Only The Animals – International Competition – SBIFF

Only The Animals features a bunch of interconnecting narratives spanning across France and Cameroon. Each narrative is connected to the murder of a French woman during a snow storm in rural France. It’s weird, entertaining, and satisfying as every piece of the puzzle falls into place. Even the initially out of place opening of a man riding his bike through Abidjan with a goat on his back is eventually linked in and understood.

It’s a fun ride but I haven’t figured out what’s the point or message beyond ‘things happen by chance’. Not saying that it has to have a message – this film was enjoyable to watch – but it would turn a showy multiple narrative film into something better. Maybe I’m asking for too much after seeing the Trump era unravelling of a white upper class family in 2019s stand out murder mystery, Knives Out.

If anything it could be that everything the people aren’t grateful for gets reversed on them. E.g. Joseph is an inanimate loner who can’t love that ends up loving an inanimate loner who can’t love.

Only The Animals covers a lot but doesn’t feel slumped. While every character could have been given more of a backstory, it does fit the movie to not dwell so much. The fun is in watching the transcontinental story slowly unravel as each characters viewpoint layers onto the next.

Side note: slightly stereotypical story of witch doctors and scammers in Africa, even if it is hilarious watching them do their work to a horny middle aged white guy.

Verde – Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) 2020

If you’re looking for transcendental film from Dominican Republic, the ritualized pacing of Verde carries the fire lit by Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias’ Cocote.

Verde is the first feature film set in Dajabon, a small region in the Northwest of Dominican Republic that borders Haiti. Like Cocote, the setting contains the streams, forests, and grassland that color the interior of the country instead of the pristine beaches and resorts you’d find in tourist brochures. It’s an open environment, a long way from sweltering urban Santo Domingo situated on the opposite side of the country. Here, the outside blends with the inside as the heat and sounds permeate through the walls and open doors of everyone’s houses. Because of Dajabon’s distance from the cities, there aren’t any signs of government of authority. Spiritual leaders and gangsters have taken their place as indigenous customs hold a similar power to the church and the gangs’ tit-for-tat retribution rules.

This has consequences for the three protagonists who’s attempted heist of a gold mine goes wrong. They don’t go to the police to hand themselves in, as there are no signs of the police here. Instead, they have to answer for their actions with the locals. They also don’t go to the church to ask for forgiveness, instead choosing to visit a shaman for a ritual to cleanse their sins. However, as their silence reveals, they already know the fate waiting for them.

Their march towards their inevitable deaths, payment for the man they killed during their attempted robbery, is reflected in the slow tempo of the film and their silence. Every shot, as common in transcendental cinema, lingers for longer than it needs to, forcing you to observe the characters for longer. With more time, Carmelo’s silence becomes more obvious and his actions appear more deliberate. He has the most screen time but does the least with it. His silence appears to honor the dead and repent for the crime he committed. His actions also appear willed by a feeling of guilt. However, he doesn’t appear to be in control, as if he has already given up his body to someone else. It gives the sense that he has already embraced his ultimate fate and is mourning for himself as well as the others.

In this way, Verde fits closest to Schrader’s meditative segment of transcendental film. It’s not simply observing the characters like a surveillance camera, and it’s not focusing solely on the look of the film. Instead Verde employs its slow tempo to hold viewers in a trance like state through the chapters of the film. We follow Carmelo’s repentant march through Dajabon and in it we are given time to reflect on our own lives as we move with him closer to our fate.

Verde is an impressive debut feature that you should look out for at a festival near you.

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

Nevia – International Competition – SBIFF

With her mother dead and her father in prison, Nevia and her little sister live with her grandmother in a container park on the outskirts of Naples. It’s not the best place for her to grow up. Her grandmother rents out her rooms to prostitutes and runs odd chores for the local crime boss to try and repay the debts Nevia’s father owes. Nevia despises her grandmother for bringing men into their home.

Nevia’s other problem is that Salvatore, the 30 year old son of the crime boss, is infatuated with her. Even though she’s only 17 (and looks younger), he’s already asking her grandmother for her hand in marriage. The prostitution to many men or prostitution to Salvatore is what Nevia fears is her fate.

To escape, she finds work with the local circus. They provide her independence and a more complete family then the one she has at home. It allows her to wean herself away from her grandmother and Salvatore. But when she finds the circus leader has his own problems, she’s redirected to the fate she tried to escape.

Nevia looks a lot like the recent Neapolitan films of Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah, Dogman). It contains the same grimy urban landscape of rubbish strewn across roads, battered apartment blocks, and lots of concrete and tarmac. It’s a hopeless forgotten Italy in which opportunity doesn’t exist. The only people who succeed are involved in crime, and those that don’t are inevitably linked to them whether they want to or not.

Like Dogman’s main character, Nevia is linked to the criminal underworld by means outside her control. She comes into contact with the criminal bosses because of her father and grandmother. She’s doomed to Salvatore just for living where she grew up. It’s not a problem with her but a condition of the hopeless environment she grows up in.

The welcome difference of Nevia is that it’s led by Nevia, a young female protagonist growing up with her female relatives. It therefore provides a female perspective of life in the hopeless outskirts of urban Italy. The environment for them is much more restrictive than the criminal freedom it afford the men.