THE COUNTY – CIFF 2019 QUICKIE REVIEW

What would you do if extreme financial debt threatened to take away your dairy farm that you and your husband had inherited? Take a truck full of milk and spray it all over the office building of your enemies, of course! The County tells the tale of a tough-as-nails dairy farmer named Inga (Arndís Hrönn […]

GHOST TROPIC – CIFF 2019 QUICKIE REVIEW

Khadija (Saadia Bentaïeb) is a cleaning lady who falls asleep on the metro for the first time in twenty years and misses her stop, running all the way to the end of the line. Stuck without a train home and with no money for a taxi, she decides to walk all the way home across […]

AND THEN WE DANCED – CIFF 2019 QUICKIE REVIEW

Dance is perhaps the most fluid of art forms, and the camerawork featured in Levan Akin’s latest film And Then We Danced successfully matches that same smooth movement. His camera glides, dips, and twirls with the grace of a ballerina, pulling in audiences to his spiritually uplifting coming-out story. Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani) has been training […]

8: A SOUTH AFRICAN HORROR STORY – CIFF 2019 QUICKIE REVIEW

What would you do to bring back someone you loved from beyond the grave? This pertinent question is the motivating force behind 8, the latest film by South African director Harold Holscher. The horror feature, which is deeply steeped in South African folklore, tells the story of a white family who moves into an inherited […]

SONG WITHOUT A NAME – CIFF 2019 QUICKIE REVIEW

Political chaos, social instability, kidnapped infants, and under-the-table corruption, Song Without a Name covers all of the aforementioned material with deft skill and care. Based on a true story that was exposed to the public by the director’s own father, Song Without a Name explores the tensions and chaos of 1980s Peru, and a Kafkaesque […]

IT MUST BE HEAVEN – CIFF Quickie 2019 REVIEW

Jacques Tati was perhaps the greatest of all film comedians. Through his films (which featured him in silent performances), he effectively dissected everything wrong about modern society and the alienation humanity experienced as technology took over the world. Elia Suleiman, for all of his talents, is no Tati. It Must Be Heaven follows Elia Suleiman […]

BOMBAY ROSE – CIFF 2019 Quickie REVIEW

One of the great joys of attending any film festival, is coming across a piece of work by an up-and-coming director that you just know will make waves one day. Gitajali Rao’s feature length debut, Bombay Rose, is more than enough proof that she’ll continue to make grand impressions in the world of animation for […]