This year I thought I’d dive right into the deep end of my TIFF Preview with the category I tend to find most challenging: Contemporary World Cinema. I’ve seen some gems in this category and I’ve seen some real duds, and it’s a tough category to get a read on; there’s just not a lot to go on, other than fest catalog descriptions. There should be an award given out annually for the fest catalog description that least resembles the actual film, as chosen by a vote of attending film critics (Indiewire folks, get right on that, will you?).

This year I’m fighting my natural-born tendency to over-plan and over-think, and I’m taking a more free-form, “let’s see what happens” view of the massive TIFF schedule. There will be a handful of “must sees” on my list, but for the rest I’m going with my gut, with what looks most interesting, or what’s getting buzzed about at the fest over late night drinks on patios near the Lightbox. But still, the Preview must be done. So having culled through the entries, these are the films from the Contemporary World Cinema section that I’m most looking forward to at TIFF this year, based purely on which films looked most interesting to me based on their catalog descriptions. We’ll see how they turn out.

3
Pablo Stoll Ward, Uruguay / Germany / Argentina

Dissatisfied with his new life (and wife), a man tries to insinuate himself back into the home of the ex-wife and daughter he left ten years before, in this heartwarming and hilarious comedy-drama from Uruguayan director Pablo Stoll Ward (25 Watts, Whisky) … Stoll uses wonderfully ridiculous, absurd situations to convey the lack of communication and understanding between these three characters, each of them caught up in their own world and largely oblivious to the wants or needs of the others. With its sharply drawn scenarios and larger-than-life performances, 3 is a refreshing and heartwarming exploration of a divided family still bound together by a shared past.

Pedigree: Cannes Debutante

Baby Blues
Katarzyna Rosłaniec, Poland

Polish director Katarzyna Roslaniec follows her controversial, irresistibly scrappy debut Mall Girls with this edgy and disarmingly frank look at teen pregnancy … Baby Blues is far more than just another in the long line of films about teen pregnancy. As Natalia’s situation spirals progressively further out of control, Rosłaniec sidesteps the mini-genre’s clichés and manufactured crises, showing with both empathy and unremitting clarity the tremendous challenges facing youth whose uncontrollable desires thrust them into a world of sudden, unavoidable maturity. Scrappy, energetic and affecting, Baby Blues is an immersive look at teendom from a director who clearly knows this world like the back of her hand.

Pedigree: TIFF World Premiere

Comments: How can you NOT want to see a film where someone draws a little goatee, vampire widows peak, eyebrows and fake blood on a baby? Please. Can’t resist.

Children of Sarajevo
Aida Bejić, Bosnia-Herzegovina / Germany / France / Turkey

A determined young girl struggles to keep her younger brother on the right side of the tracks and out of the hands of social services (and the police) in this heart-wrenching drama set against the war-scarred landscape of Sarajevo … Begić adopts a Dardennes-style naturalism for her second feature, her camera in almost constant motion as she follows Rahima (played with compelling ferocity by the remarkable Pikić) on her daily routines, allowing the story to develop organically from the charcter’s day-to-day existence. Gritty, sobering and helplessly moving, Children of Sarajevo is a powerful attestation to a painful truth: seventeen years after the ceasefire, Sarajevo continues to bleed.

Pedigree: Cannes debutante

The Cremator
Peng Tao, China

An undertaker who sells “ghost wives” to bereaved families wanting companions for their unwed, departed relatives resolves to take his own posthumous bride when he discovers that he has a terminal illness — but complications arise when he strikes up a relationship with the young sister of his prospective, already deceased mate … Poetic, sombre and bittersweet, The Cremator unfolds with an intoxicatingly languorous rhythm, mining the intricacies of mourning rituals for both pathos and gentle humour. Cao’s tentative relationship with Xiuqiao becomes a balm for his stark and lonely existence — and as he moves ever closer to his inescapable end, one wonders whether even the most fleeting of connections we make in our lives have the power to resonate beyond the grave.

Pedigree: TIFF World Premiere

Fin (The End)
Jorge Torregrossa, Spain

The first feature from Spanish director Jorge Torregrossa is a stunning apocalyptic thriller set against the awe-inspiring peaks of the Pyrenees, where a group of friends find themselves at the mercy of nature — and their own psychic demons — after a mysterious, all-encompassing blackout … Brilliantly and relentlessly building the tension to a hair-raising pitch, Torregrossa’s end-of-the-world allegory milks its sci-fi conceit for maximum suspense. Framing his protagonists against the majesty of a towering landscape that seems to dwarf the human drama played out beneath its indifferent gaze, Torregrossa transcends the boundaries of genre to offer a profound meditation on a fundamental philosophical question: what does it mean to exist, and to share that existence with others?

Pedigree: TIFF World Premiere

Fly with the Crane
Li Ruijun, China

Serenely resigned to his impending death but deeply afraid at the prospect of being cremated, an elderly carpenter seeks to have his last wishes carried out in this gentle, beautifully realized drama from director Li Ruijin … The themes of the film — tradition versus modernity, long-held customs versus government dictates — are exquisitely rendered in this timely story about the state policies that are uprooting peasant communities in the remote provinces of China. A quietly beautiful account of the twilight years of a man’s life, Fly With the Crane reminds us that sometimes how we die can be just as important as how we live.

Pedigree: Venice Debutante

Imagine
Andrzej Jakimowski, Poland / France / Portugal

In this remarkable and captivating film from director Andrzej Jakimowski, a young blind man who can psychically envision the landscape through which he walks takes a similarly afflicted woman under his wing, and ventures with her out into the beautiful (and perilous) streets of Lisbon … Jakimowski’s film goes far beyond this deep empathy, this ability to channel its characters’ experience and the very sense of what it feels like to walk unassisted. As Ian and Eva venture out, Ian reveals his ability to see more with his imagination than most people can see with their eyes. This provides Ian, and Jakimowski, with the greatest challenge, and us with some of the most startling and tense sequences in the film. Imagine is a work of penetrating acuity — by turns exhilarating, frightening, moving and magical. It is absolutely captivating.

Pedigree: TIFF World Premiere

Jackie
Antoinette Beumer, The Netherlands

Two very different twin sisters from the Netherlands (real-life siblings Carice and Jelka van Houten) travel to America to help out the mother they have never met (Academy Award winner Holly Hunter) in Dutch director Antoinette Beumer’s heartwarming, cross-cultural take on the classic American road movie … It’s hard to imagine a more ideal trio of actresses for this story. Carice van Houten has already attracted international attention with her star-making performance in Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, and she is fully matched by her younger sister Jelka, making a sterling debut on the international scene after her extensive work in Dutch film and television. The always compelling Hunter, meanwhile, is magnetic as the nearly silent matriarch of this fractured clan. Under the assured direction of Antoinette Beumer, Jackie is a stirring, cross-cultural take on the classic American road movie.

Pedigree: TIFF North American Premiere

Comments: This one I want to see if for no other reason than because I’m excited to see Holly Hunter and Carice van Houten opposite each other. Compelling.

The Lesser Blessed
Anita Doron, Canada

High school is especially harsh for Larry Sole (Joel Nathan Evans), a teenaged metal-head living in a remote community in the Northwest Territories. Shy and ruminative, he’s taunted daily by his town’s golden boy and resident bully, Darcy (Adam Butcher). This is because of Larry’s tortured past, and his aboriginal roots: he, his mother Verna (Tamara Podemski) and her sometime boyfriend Jed (Benjamin Bratt) are all members of the Tlicho First Nation. Larry also nurtures a crush on the popular Juliet Hope (Chloe Rose) — who just happens to be tight with Darcy. Things seem to change for the better when Jed returns from a trip to the bush and a new kid, the Métis Johnny Beck (Kiowa Gordon), arrives at school. Johnny and Larry become fast friends for a variety of reasons — most important among them, Johnny is the only one with the cojones to stand up to Darcy. Little does Larry know that his past and this new friendship are on a collision course that could alter his life.


Pedigree: TIFF World Premiere

Comments: Tamara Podemski blew me away five years ago with her Sundance debut in Four Sheets to the Wind, a performance for which she won a special jury prize, but she’s been scarce since then. I can’t wait to see her opposite Benjamin Bratt in this film.

Middle of Nowhere
Ava DuVernay, USA
A young woman (mesmerizing newcomer Emayatzy Corinealdi) brings anguish to herself and those around her through her blind devotion to her imprisoned husband, until a chance encounter leads her to reclaim the life she had almost given away. Writer-director Ava DuVernay won the Best Director prize at Sundance for her elegant, emotionally complex second feature … Beautifully photographed by cinematographer Bradford Young, Middle of Nowhere burrows deeply into the troubled life of a young woman whose blind devotion to an impossible ideal of love and loyalty causes anguish to herself and those around her. Newcomer Corinealdi is a marvelous discovery: the camera simply adores her luminous presence. Hardwick’s Derek is both tough and vulnerable, helplessly fatalistic about the life that awaits him, while Oyelowo lights up the screen with an entrancing tenderness. It is Toussaint as Ruth, however, who captures the film’s core theme during a revelatory scene at a kitchen table, where a lifetime of hope, anger, disappointment and pride suddenly yields the realization that what love has destroyed, that same love can rebuild.

Pedigree: Sundance debutante, won Best Director Sundance 2012

The Patience Stone
Atiq Rahimi, France / Germany / Afghanistan

A woman in an unnamed, war-torn Middle Eastern country delivers an engrossing, emotional monologue to her comatose husband, in novelist and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi’s poetic and politically charged allegory based on his award-winning novel … With this beguiling work, Rahimi has given all faceless and speechless Muslim women an opportunity to share what is going on behind their veils and in their minds. Unable to respond, the woman’s husband has no opportunity to talk back and reassert his dominance. He must listen — listen as we do, intently, fascinated by this release of long-repressed emotion. The Patience Stone is a magnificent corrective to years of silence.

Pedigree: TIFF World Premiere

Smashed
James Ponsoldt
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) and Megan Mullaly (Party Down) star in this story about a perpetually soused first-grade teacher’s painful but ultimately triumphant struggle to sober up and remake her life …With a gritty, unflinching trajectory that calls Half Nelson to mind, Smashed asks us to root for someone who appears to be unredeemable. Ponsoldt takes a long, hard look at the process of overcoming a crippling addiction: the sacrifices, the unfathomable patience and willpower required. Winstead gives a fearless performance as Kate, showing both the recklessness and the self-doubt, the quick defenses and the emptiness. Ultimately, Smashed instills us with a renewed faith in our capacity to change. If Kate can begin to climb up from a hole this deep, there’s hope for the rest of us.

Pedigree: Sundance Debutante

Thy Womb
Brillante Mendoza, The Phillipines

Filipino master Brillante Mendoza returns to the Festival with the moving Thy Womb, which focuses on Bangas-An (Bembol Roco) and his wife Shalena (Nora Aunor), a childless, aging Muslim couple who eke out a hardscrabble existence on a remote island. They fish by day while Shalena painstakingly sews elaborate tapestries at night, and, when necessary, serves as the community’s midwife. In addition to the tough labour they engage in every day, the couple must deal with the nearby guerillas who routinely rob unlucky travellers on the sea. Yet these hardships all seem minor in comparison to the difficulties they face in trying to adopt a child. All seems hopeless, until Shalena makes a startling suggestion: that Bangas-An should take a second wife capable of giving him a child.
Pedigree: TIFF World Premiere

Comments: I’ve not been a fan of this director’s previous work, but I’m willing to give it another shot with this film, which looks fairly interesting and hopefully involves neither gratuitous nudity nor intimate close-ups of ass-boils being popped by glass bottles. Fingers crossed.

Watchtower
Pelin Esmer, Turkey / Germany / France

Haunted by his dark past, a man takes a job as a fire warden in a remote tower in the wilderness, and is inexorably drawn towards a young woman with a terrible secret of her own … Istanbul-born Pelin Esmer, fully conscious of her role as a female filmmaker in a male-dominated industry, cooks up a scathing critique of conservative Turkish society using the simplest ingredient: silence. An impromptu visit to Seher’s family quickly solves the mystery of her self-imposed exile, when her mother chooses to keep quiet in the face of a prospective scandal. Having earned her stripes as a documentary filmmaker, Esmer doesn’t sugar-coat reality, laying equal blame on male chauvinism and female submissiveness, a self-enforced tradition of servitude that has driven new generations of Turkish women to despair.

The good news is that there’s always hope to be found, even if it’s hiding at the top of a quiet mountain.

Pedigree: TIFF World Premiere

*(All film descriptions are from the TIFF catalog.)

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•