Film Festival Coverage Hub - Reviews & Recaps

Desrances – Pan African Film Festival 2020

In the opening of Desrances, Francis is out fishing when he hears gun shots from the shore. He races back to his family home to find his mother and relatives shot dead by insurgents in the 2004 Haitian coup d’état. It’s a traumatic totem he still carries approximately 15 years later in his new life in Cote d’Ivoire.

In Cote d’Ivoire, his life is normal. He has helped make a happy family with his wife and 12 year old daughter, and runs a shop with his father in law which provides him with enough to afford his nice sized apartment. His life gets even better when he finds out his wife is expecting the son he’s wished for. He’s so excited for his future son that he even names him well in advance and starts building his crib. However, in his excitement he fails to spot the familiar signs of a civil war brewing in the country and that his daughter is becoming more distant.

The turning point of Desrances arrives with the news that all of the most dangerous prisoners of the country have escaped (an event that actually happened in 2017). It’s at this point that the film turns into a post-apocalyptic style thriller with a group of stereotypical prisoners, that wouldn’t be out of place in a DC movie, providing the antagonists to Francis and his family. Out of the blue, the group turns up at Francis’ house with guns and machetes in an attempted robbery. Francis and his family manage to escape, and rush to the hospital with Francis’ wife in labor. However, as Francis’ PTSD kicks in, he loses track of time and reawakens at home alone with his daughter, with his wife and new-born missing.

The second half of Desrances follows Francis as he runs around Abidjan looking for the group of prisoners who have kidnapped his missing wife and son. The city has quickly become a desolate urban wasteland with supermarkets full of empty shelves, deserted streets, and bands of people assembling to stake their claims to sectors of Abidjan. These are all signs of your typical post-apocalyptic movie; signs which point to the futility of Francis’ search. However, if anyone could interpret the signs, it should be Francis. He has lived through the revolution in Haiti and experienced the trauma of war. However, out of blind desperation to meet his son he keeps looking no matter how hard his daughter tries to stop him.

Desrances draws on the 2017 escape of over 100 inmates from prisons in Cote D’Ivoire and the Ivorian Civil War to create a post-apocalyptic environment in Abidjan. Behind the chaos is a story about a father and daughter that have to reconnect after losing touch with each other, held together by great performances from Jimmy Jean-Louis and his daughter. It’s a well put together thriller that should have popular appeal.

Bigman Wahala – Pan African Film Festival 2020

Bigman Wahala is an enjoyable road-trip comedy with commercial appeal that focuses on the unlikely relationship between a poor taxi driver and a wanted former government official on the run. It never takes itself too seriously and even gets away with poking a bit of fun at both the ‘Bigman’ and military governments as well as the gullibility of the public.

Bigman Wahala starts with Honest, our friendly taxi driver, stuck in a traffic jam in Accra. The frantic John Woo style cutting rapidly builds pressure until Honest spots a gap in the traffic and races on home. It’s a sign that this road-trip comedy will be filled a few bursts of tense energy to propel it forward.

The next comes when an armed jeep full of soldiers carrying assault rifles descends on the Government building to stage a successful coup d’état. Like the opening traffic scene, the attack is full of fast cuts that cross the usual 180 boundaries of Hollywood cutting which makes it appear very chaotic. However, the insurgents win a quick victory that seems a bit too easy – perhaps a satirical jab at how many coups there have been in Western Africa over the last years. It’s presented as something a bit too familiar. Nevertheless, the insurgents quickly assume control of the airwaves and order all former government officials to report to their nearest police station. This is when we start following ‘Bigman’ Joseph, the former minister of the health department and follow his attempt to escape the country.

Our Bigman is comically selfish. As soon as he hears the news, he leaves his wife to collect his huge stash of money from the safe in his office. Whilst he’s there, some insurgents arrive to look for him, so he escapes through the back entrance and jumps into the nearest taxi, which just so happens to be driven by Honest. This kicks off a light buddy road trip movie between Bigman Joseph and Honest, as Honest helps Bigman to escape the country on lockdown.

Whilst the ending undermines the class boundaries which define the rest of the film in its’ we’re all human message, Bigman Wahala for the most part is a fun road trip comedy built on the classic Fish Out of Water and How the Mighty Have Fallen tropes.

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

Mi Vida – International Competition – SBIFF

In Mi Vida, a retired hairdresser’s life changes when she travels to Cadiz to take a language course. She falls in love with the city and the escape from her life at home. However, she has to decide between her dreams and her concerned family at home.

Mi Vida is a fairly conventional but enjoyable film about breaking free and following your dreams. Like Under the Tuscan Sun, Lou finds a romanticised Southern European life. Instead of a crumbling Tuscan house overlooking the valley, Lou finds a ‘humble’ rooftop apartment overlooking the cathedral. In the locals she easily finds a new best friend and has someone fall in love with her. She’s living the clichéd Southern European dream many Northern Europeans and North Americans have.

The opening is the only part of the film which breaks convention. Lou navigates her way from the airport to a cramped apartment organised by the language class. Her hosts are a young black family living in a cramped apartment – not the place you’d expect a white retired lady to be. She’s put up in a small room and shares a bathroom with the family – emphasised when the young boy walks into the bathroom whilst Lou is washing her hands. However, to the detriment of the film and in honour of convention, Lou makes up an excuse to leave the apartment and ends up at the clichéd dream rooftop terrace.

The filmmakers dangle this more interesting relationship between an old white lady and a poor black family led by a single mum in front of us, before saying we can’t see it and showing us a relationship between an old white lady and her middle aged Spanish teacher. Why hint at an interesting film before switching to something generic?

A Taste of Our Land – Pan African Film Festival 2020

A Taste of Our Land is the first narrative feature I’ve seen that speaks to the rising Chinese influence in African countries. It’s inspired by the director’s experience working in a Chinese mine in Rwanda, where he saw a colleague beaten so badly he was hospitalized. His crime? To ask for his pay.

A Taste of Our Land features a similarly brutal Chinese-run mine in Uganda. It’s operated by a Chinese convict named Cheng that brutally beats his employees for any acts of dissent. He works for a Chinese company that don’t appear in the film. We only hear them on the other end of Cheng’s phone, emphasizing their disregard for Africa and it’s people. They’re extracting Africa’s wealth from abroad with the help of a criminal. It paints a surprisingly blunt picture of the exploitative motivations of China in Africa

The victim of this film is an older African man called Yohani who struggles to provide for his pregnant wife. He tries to get compensation for the Chinese mine which was built on his land without permission. However, because the local authorities he appeals to have already been paid off, there’s nothing he can do. The African authorities have sold him out for temporary wealth.

When Yohani discovers a nugget of gold on his land, he becomes an obvious allegory of the world’s exploitation of Africa. Three protagonists are after his new found wealth, and each one of them representatives a different world power.

The first is the China, represented in the Chinese mine built on Yohani’s land without his permission. It reaps the fruit of the land without sharing it with the African people. They’re the new colonizers.
The second is Britain, represented in a British immigrant named Donald that walks around wearing a colonial era helmet. The British used to hold power over Africa, but their power has waned in the last 50 years or so, represented by Donald’s asthma inhaler. Donald can’t even tell China what to do, as shown by his inability to convince Cheng to look for gold. However, his colonial era hat symbolizes that Britain still tries to cling onto its’ former power and still exploits the continent.
The third is the Catholic church, represented in a European priest that Yohani looks to for protection. Instead of sheltering Yohani, the priest tries to steal his gold; they’re just another institution that exploits the African people.

Credit is due to the filmmakers for avoiding the conventional African film tropes of war, HIV, and witchcraft to focus on the growing Chinese influence in Africa. It’s rare to see an African film implicating other national powers and religious institutions so blatantly in its demise. However, A Taste of Our Land’s bad acting makes the allegories a bit too obvious. It highlights the heavy handedness of the script and lack of production quality of the film (it’s made on a spartan $12,000 budget). As a result, what could be a subtle implication of religious and national powers in Africa’s exploitation comparable to Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, ends up feeling a bit stereotypically comical.

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

The Restoration – Latin American Competition – SBIFF

The Restoration features Tato, a useless 50 year old cocaine addict that has moved back into his mothers home following his latest divorce. In a moment of misguided ingenuity he decides to sell his bedridden mother’s house (one of the last old houses in Lima) behind her back. To fool her, he recreates her bedroom in a shed in the desert.

In it’s best moments, The Restoration contains a tragic satire of the rapid modernisation of Lima. It’s self aware and able to play comedy off a dark(ish) subject matter with ease, much like Luis Estrada’s El Infierno (which manages to get away with poking fun at the narco-state of Mexico).

However, unfortunately this commentary becomes obscured as the movie chooses to focus on carrying out the ‘magic trick’ of switching Tato’s mum from her old bedroom into a makeshift one without her noticing. It turns the movie from a promising social satire into a relationship comedy of the dying mum and her useless cocaine-addicted son. After beginning the film with a brief commentary on the consequences of Lima’s modernization, the cheap laughs and attempted tugging on heart strings are the easy way to end the film.

Ultimately The Restoration is ends as a somewhat funny Latin film in the realm of the Eugenio Derbez film universe. There’s stereotyped characters, quick laughs, and melodramatic cheesiness. If that sounds like your thing, this film might just be for you.