Freedom Fields follows a group of Libyan women trying to start up the women’s Libyan football team. They’ve all grown up watching sports stars like Messi and Ronaldo and want to be just like them. However, in a fiercely patriarchal society, their dreams are under threat from extremist preachers and their conservative followers.
Do you want to get lost in reality? Try watching Three Lives and Only One Death. It follows Marcello Mastroianni as a character that spans a few storylines in and around Paris. At times the story lines seem normal, but before long you’ll realise that they are just illusions. See if you can find your way around Raul Ruiz’s world – free to watch here on YouTube.
Why Watch Three Lives and Only One Death?
If you like your films mysterious (think David Lynch or Ingmar Bergman)
For Marcello Mastroianni in one of his last roles (the great actor from La Dolce Vita, Divorce: Italian Style, and many more)
A narrator that looks like a late night news anchor starts the film. As he starts narrating about a man who wakes up because of a baby crying, we see the man he is talking about. The narrator tells us that the man has a headache and goes to the pharmacy, and then, as if controlled by the narrator, the man on screen does the same.
In the pharmacy queue, another man starts talking to our protagonist. It starts off like the normal expected small talk before becoming much more unnerving for our protagonist. This stranger reveals that he knows exactly where this man lives, who he is, and who his wife is. Our protagonist wants to get away from him but the man offers him a lot of money just to sit down and chat with him.
From then on, it gets even weirder. The man reveals that he was the previous husband of our protagonists wife. He tells him he didn’t disappear for 20 years but rather lost 20 years of his time watching these little fairies (yes that wasn’t a typo). He even takes our protagonist into another room to show him these fairies. At this point the camera goes completely red and zooms in and out to disorientate us. Where are we? And what is real? Only the director Raul Ruiz knows!
Conclusion
You’ll experience a lot more of the unnerving world that Raul Ruiz has created if you watch the full film. There’s plenty of things to throw you off. Just like in the great David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman films you’ll be questioning a lot by the end of this film, but it is a great ride!
Mimosas is a film of epic journeys. There’s Ahmed and Said who are attempting to guide a Sheikh and his caravan across the Moroccan mountains. Secondly there’s the magical journey of Shakib who travels time to guide Ahmed to a more honourable life. Check out a spoiler free trailer below (I’ve deliberately cut the length).
Why Watch Mimosas?
If you’re thinking of going to Morocco but aren’t sure if the scenery is beautiful enough (you’re wrong)
To go on an epic journey through the mountains reminiscent of Lawrence of Arabia or Lord of the Rings and an awesome scene with taxis riding across a desert like Mad Max
It won Critic’s Week at Cannes in 2016
Get lost in time as the past and present meet
The Breakdown
Mimosas starts with a few shots of graffiti on a wall of a castle and garden before switching to a few shots of the mountains. As you’ll see later in the film, the graffiti alludes to the modern world (the present) whilst the mountains provides the setting for the past.
After a screen wipe (a blank shot) we are introduced to Ahmed and Said, two guides helping a dying Sheikh to cross the mountains. They are all wearing traditional clothes and half of them are on horseback. These scenes of Ahmed and Said seem to be from at least hundred years ago, probably more.
In contrast, we enter another world in a Moroccan town bordering the mountains (probably the place where the graffiti from the opening scene was shot). It’s here we meet Shakib, preaching about creation fervently to a group of men. It’s present day, evident from the cars and clothing. He’s picked out by one of the head workmen to go with him for an important job: to go into the mountains, find Ahmed and keep him safe.
It’s in his journey into the mountains and meet up with Ahmed that he magically crosses from the present into the past.
Conclusion
Who is Shakib? And how did he seem to travel time? Is he a prophet? Mimosas depicts the epic journey of Said and Ahmed which is suddenly surpassed by the epic journey of Shakib. You’ll be actively involved in this film as you try to piece together the gaps.
Verida is getting married, and in Mauritania, that means she has to fatten up before the wedding to make sure she’s as beautiful as possible. You’ll get eat all the bowls of cous cous and meat with her on her journey to becoming a big beautiful woman. Flesh Out is a well made portrait of a woman caught in a culture that clashes with modernisation.
If you love controversy with plenty of drama, check out The Crime of Father Amaro. It’s a full frontal attack on the Catholic Church in Mexico which many tried to ban. Whilst it’s not as damaging as Spotlight, it will remind you that all of us are human no matter what position we’re in.
Here’s a dramatic trailer for a dramatic film.
Why Watch Crime of Father Amaro?
It’s controversial – religious groups lobbied to ban it in Mexico but their attempts backfired as the publicity rocketed this film to success at the box office
To see Gabriel Garcia Bernal (famous for Y Tu Mama Tambien, No, Motorcycle Diaries and many more)
If you love a bit of melodrama
It was Oscar nominated for best foreign language picture
The Breakdown
The opening of the film deliberately leads us to sympathize with the young Father Amaro (Garcia Bernal). Firstly, he’s charitable. When the elderly man he sits next to on the bus is robbed, he reimburses him with his own money. Secondly, he appears friendly. The local kids run around him after he playfully grabs their football and he chills with the fellow pastors to watch football on TV. He has all the makings of a great guy. However, the melodrama slowly kicks to life as he begins to take advantage of one of the parish girls who is clearly infatuated with him.
There are plenty of omens that something is going to go wrong. Firstly, you’ll notice that wherever Father Amaro is, the statues of the Saints and Jesus are always watching him. There’s a statue of Jesus that watches over him at home, from his bedside table. Furthermore, the director makes sure you notice each of the saints looking down at him whenever he is in the church by cutting to static shots of each one as he walks down the aisle. Nothing he does escapes from their view.
Secondly, the saints have a helper in a crazy old woman aptly named Dionisia after the Greek God Dionysus, the God of Wine, as well as ritual madness and religious ecstasy. It’s clear that Dionisia is both mad and madly religious. In addition, she also comparable to the witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. She predicts the love affair between Father Amaro and Amelia.
The two omens (the Saints and Dionisia) are both critiques of Catholicism. Firstly, of all the sins that are committed in plain sight of the saints and then confessed the next day. And secondly, of how it is interpreted by the population (Dionisia has malformed dolls posing as Saints, and tries to exorcise her disabled neighbor).
Conclusion
The Crime of Father Amaro is another great controversial melodrama from Mexico. It attacks the Catholic Church it’s hypocrisies, so it’s not surprising that Catholic groups tried to ban it. Unfortunately for them, the controversy propelled it to become the biggest film in Mexico.
If you want even more religious controversy, check out Oscar winner Spotlight. However, if you want blatant provocation, check out the Mexican film Battle in Heaven. If you want to see some more great Mexican film, check out our Top Ten Mexican Films here.
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