St. Louis International Film Festival
In-person and virtual screenings
NOV 4-21, 2021
Once more with 405 films from 75 countries (!), the world-class international festival takes place for its 30th anniversary – this time online and in person (with proof of vaccination and with mask – no food/drinks allowed).
Unlike previous years, I am not writing reviews (except for a few words) – the “movie-blurbs” are from the festival’s website – but letting you know what I would recommend. Some I have previewed, some not. I will put an asterisk (*) where I have previewed the film.
These are, as usual, only my own selection…
MANY trailers are available by clicking on the links!
WITH LOTS OF VIRTUAL ACCESS FILMS DURING THE ENTIRE FESTIVAL
– some accessible all over the world, some in the US, and some in Missouri and Illinois –
WATCH FOR THE SPIRITED BEING MENTION
In the searing drama “Hive,” Fahrije lives with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. To provide for her struggling family, Fahrije pulls the other widows in her community together to launch a business selling a local food product. They find healing and solace in considering a future without their husbands, but their desire to begin living independently is met with hostility. The men in the patriarchy-dominated village condemn Fahrije’s efforts to empower herself and the women around her, starting a feud that threatens both their newfound sovereignty and the financial future of Fahrije’s family. Against the backdrop of Eastern Europe’s civil unrest and lingering misogyny, Fahrije and the women of her village join in a struggle to find hope in the face of an uncertain future. Winner of the Audience Award, Directing Award, and World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, “Hive” is a pithy, devastating portrait of loss and the uphill journey to freedom. The Hollywood Reporter writes: “In ‘Hive,’ her first feature, writer-director Blerta Basholli is inspired by the true story of Fahrije Hoti, a single mother who, many years after her husband goes missing, is forced by economic necessity to face his loss. Instead of focusing on her emotional journey, Basholli crafts an engrossing, utterly classic tale of overcoming adversity around how she bucks the hide-bound town, gets out of the house and finds a job that will support her family.”
Perfumes
Les parfums
Directed by Grégory Magne
France | 2019 | Narrative
100 minutes | French
Comedy&
Tivoli Theatre
In the lively French comedy “Perfumes,” Anne Walberg (Emmanuelle Devos) is a celebrity in the world of expensive scents. Her exquisitely sensitive “nose” is highly desired by multiple companies, and her life of privilege allows Anne to behave like a selfish and ill-tempered diva. But new driver Guillaume (Grégory Montel of “Call My Agent”) isn’t easily cowed, and he proves unafraid to stand up to his employer. The Guardian writes: “In this extremely French but quite enjoyable comedy-drama, comic actor Grégory Montel, basically a smiley labrador in human form, plays Guillaume, a divorced, middle-aged Parisian chauffeur. He is striving to make enough money to upgrade to a better apartment so he can have his tween-aged daughter (Zelie Rixhon) stay overnight. That makes enduring the hauteur of his latest client, professional ‘nose’ or fragrance designer Mademoiselle Anne Walberg (Emmanuelle Devos), all the more challenging. From this cutesy meeting — a predictably antagonistic first encounter — a friendship develops that, admirably for a change, doesn’t end up in quite the place you might expect by the end. In fact, that’s just one of several refreshing surprises. Others include the finely observed writing that limns the relationships between the main duo and between them and supporting characters, such as Guillaume and his smart, observant kid, or Anne and her avaricious agent (Pauline Moulène).”
VIRTUAL ACCESS worldwide!
A follow-up documentary based on this unbelievable news story of systemic racism.
Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
Directed by Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler
U.S | 2020 | Documentary
117 minutes | English
Saturday, Nov 6 at 3:00pm
&
Tuesday, Nov 9 at 6:00pm
Tivoli Theater
Directed by Sarah and Emily Kunstler — who previously helmed the well-received “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe,” about their famous father — “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America” features a multimedia performance on the history of American racism by ACLU deputy legal director Jeffrey Robinson as its centerpiece. In that sense, it’s a formal variant on “An Inconvenient Truth,” but the film doesn’t stay confined to Broadway’s Town Hall — though this material is highly effective — instead venturing out into the wider world, from a hanging tree in Charleston, S.C., to a walking tour of the origins of slavery in Colonial New York, to the site of a 1947 lynching in rural Alabama. Using archival material, vérité footage, and interviews with Black change-makers and eyewitnesses to history, the film brings history to life, exploring the enduring legacy of White supremacy and our collective responsibility to overcome it. Robinson shows how legalized discrimination and state-sanctioned brutality, murder, dispossession, and disenfranchisement continued long after slavery ended, profoundly impeding Black Americans’ ability to create and accumulate wealth and to gain access to jobs, housing, education, and healthcare. The film also poignantly traces the Robinson family’s illustrative personal journey, particularly their experiences while attempting to purchase a home in a White neighborhood. With heartbreak, humor, passion, and rage, “Who We Are” offers a potent distillation of the key ingredients in America’s racist brew, and Robinson serves as an appealing, charismatic guide to Black life past and present.
– The Film’s Website: https://www.medicinemanstanbrock.com
**The Monopoly of Violence – (PM: “probably the most important recent film I have seen” – Nominated Best Documentary Les César 2021 – Lumière Best Documentary Lumières 2021 – Quinzaine des réalisateurs Cannes)
Un pays qui se tient sage
Directed by David Dufresne
France | 2020 | Documentary
86 minutes | French
Monday, Nov 8 at 7:30pm
Webster U./Moore
Journalist David Dufresne’s first documentary is a devastatingly timely investigation of the place of police in democracy and the legitimacy of violence. Primarily composed of smartphone images filmed at the yellow-vest demonstrations in France, the film presents a viscerally shocking picture of police brutality and protests transformed into scenes of urban warfare. Especially compelling are the sections in which interviewees view footage of police violence in which they were the victims. A shattering and intelligent documentary, “The Monopoly of Violence” — which screened at the 2020 New York Film Festival — is essential viewing. J. Hoberman in Artforum writes: “This meta-documentary, an annotated assemblage of mainly first-person smartphone videos made during the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrations of 2018 and 2019 by the mixed-media journalist-artist-provocateur David Dufresne sans help from French ministry of culture, is as significant in its way as the founding film of cinema verité, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s 1961 ‘Chronicle of Summer,’ in which Parisians of all types were asked about their personal lives and then in some cases, having seen themselves on-screen, were interviewed again provide the film’s coda. ‘Monopoly’ creates a similar feedback loop. Simply described, the film features images of urban mayhem — Robocopoid police battling scraggly yellow vests. Produced largely by the demonstrators, these videos are presented on the screen as subjects for analysis by actual participants, among other commentators (truck drivers, plumbers, lawyers, police-union officials, academics, social workers, journalists, stay-at-home moms): talking heads whose identities are withheld until the end of the movie, the better to sharpen the viewer’s appreciation of body language and vocal tone.”
LIVRET D’ACCOMPAGNEMENT POUR L’ORGANISATION DE PROJECTIONS-DEBAT (par Amnesty International)
FROM THE FILM: “There are three kinds of violence. The first, the mother of all the others, is the institutional violence, the one that legalizes and perpetuates the dominations, the oppressions and the exploitations, the one that crushes and flattens millions of men in its silent and well oiled wheels. The second is revolutionary violence, which arises from the desire to abolish the first. The third is repressive violence, the object of which is to stifle the second by making itself the auxiliary and the accomplice of the first violence, the one that engenders all the others. There is no worse hypocrisy to call violence only the second, by pretending to forget the first, which gives birth to it, and the third which kills it.”
EN FRANÇAIS
« Il y a trois sortes de violence. La première, mère de toutes les autres, est la violence institutionnelle, celle qui légalise et perpétue les dominations, les oppressions et les exploitations, celle qui écrase et lamine des millions d’hommes dans ses rouages silencieux et bien huilés.
La seconde est la violence révolutionnaire, qui naît de la volonté d’abolir la première.
La troisième est la violence répressive, qui a pour objet d’étouffer la seconde en se faisant l’auxiliaire et la complice de la première violence, celle qui engendre toutes les autres.
Il n’y a pas de pire hypocrisie de n’appeler violence que la seconde, en feignant d’oublier la première, qui la fait naître, et la troisième qui la tue. »
– Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara, or Helder Camara,, Brazilian Archbishop and liberation theologian
The Art of Rebellion (PM: SPIRITED BEING!)
Directed by Libby Spears
U.S | 2021 | Documentary
79 minutes | English
Webster U./Moore
&
VIRTUAL ACCESS – Available Only in Missouri and Illinois
“The Art of Rebellion” follows blunt, sarcastic, but ultimately lovable Lydia Emily — an LA-based street artist, activist, and single mother of three — as she defies a crippling diagnosis that threatens to take away her livelihood. Fighting against an unforgiving healthcare system while she battles the symptoms of progressive multiple sclerosis, Lydia ties paintbrushes to her failing hands to create large-scale works of creative resistance. “I can’t sing. I can’t write,” she says. “But I can paint.” Over time, the portrait of Lydia that emerges is one of a tough, tender, indomitable force of nature, plagued by hospital bills, buoyed by medication, never silenced. The film follows Lydia through several years of her life, providing viewers with a real sense of the flow of life for the artist and her clan. The kids — one of them autistic — grow older and struggle with their own identities, and Lydia rides the roller coaster of MS symptoms from good days to stays in the hospital. There’s even a love relationship that takes a surprising turn, landing Lydia in a small town outside of Austin. Throughout, the film features Lydia’s art, which is compelling and direct — just like her personality. As access to healthcare in America comes under significant threat, “The Art of Rebellion” presents the story of a woman whose life underscores just how urgently we need universal health coverage, better treatment options, prevention, and support.
In “Paris, 13th District” — which debuted at Cannes — three girls and a boy become friends, sometimes lovers, and often both, when Émilie meets Camille, who is attracted to Nora, who crosses paths with Amber. Based on a trio of short stories by award-winning cartoonist Adrian Tomine — “Amber Sweet,” “Killing and Dying,” and “Hawaiian Getaway” — the film is directed by Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet,” “Rust and Bone,” “The Sisters Brothers”) and co-written by Céline Sciamma (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), whose own “Petite Maman” is also featured at this year’s SLIFF. The vibrant cast features Lucie Zhang, Makita Samba, singer Jehnny Beth (of the duo John and Jehn and the rock band Savages), and Noémie Merlant (the co-star of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”). Little White Lies writes: “It’s the quartet of actors at the heart of the story who really deserve all the praise: in a pleasurable two-hour runtime, they feel fully-realised and sympathetic. Newcomer Lucie Zhang is particularly impressive, cutting an acerbic but vulnerable figure as Emilie, caught between familial expectation and her own interests. With keenly-observed riffs on topics including dating apps, stand-up comedy and the nature of casual dating in the modern world, there’s no moralising or scorn for the young folks and their messy approach to work and play. Even with its artsy cinematography, this feels like Audiard’s least self-conscious work to date, a playful reminder that the kids aren’t alright, but they’re feeling their way through.”
**Cow (PM: Produced by the BBC, this is a disturbing but necessary film, for a world that prefers to be blind to reality.)
A documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“American Honey,” “Fish Tank,” “Red Road”), “Cow” is an immersive work akin to films from the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab such as “Sweetgrass” and “Leviathan.” Closely focused on a single dairy cow — the camera seems almost Velcroed to her throughout, only occasionally detaching and pulling back to provide a wider view — the film follows her through several cycles of calving (with the calves quickly hauled away to her consternation) and impassively records her repetitive daily routines (the automated milking, the regimented feeding with other cows, the immense time spent in crowded conditions in a bleak industrial-scaled structure) and her occasional respites in a pasture (though even then she’s plagued by swarming flies). Without offering any explicit commentary, “Cow” speaks eloquently about humans’ exploitation of animals for our benefit. Describing the film as “a nearly wordless, yet extremely loud and incredibly in-your-face argument for veganism,” the Hollywood Reporter writes: “The film represents Arnold’s first feature-length documentary, applying her characteristic kitchen-sink realism and quotidian poetry to a world where animals exist solely under human control, serving as mere supply chains for our unlimited appetites. Yet as ‘Cow’ reveals in one scene after another, livestock can have feelings, too. In fact, these animals are much closer to us than we’d like to imagine.”
Directed by Christopher Chambers
Canada, Ethiopia, U.S | 2021 | Documentary
88 minutes | English
Set in contemporary Paris, “France” — the latest from SLIFF alum Bruno Dumont (“Slack Bay,” “The Life of Jesus”) — stars Léa Seydoux, who brilliantly holds the center of this unexpected, unsettling new film, which starts out as a satire of the contemporary news media before steadily spiraling out into something richer and darker. Never one to shy away from provoking his viewers, Dumont casts Seydoux as France de Meurs, a seemingly unflappable superstar TV journalist whose career, home life, and psychological stability are shaken after she carelessly drives into a young delivery man on a busy Paris street. This accident triggers a series of self-reckonings, as well as a strange romance that proves impossible to shake. A film that teases at redemption while refusing to grant absolution, “France” is tragicomic and deliciously ambivalent — a very 21st-century treatment of the difficulty of maintaining identity in a corrosive culture. “France” has screened at a bevy of major international film fests, including Cannes, Toronto, and New York.
A hybrid of animation and live action, “A Once and Future Peace” provides an engrossing exploration of Peacemaking Circles — a humane and effective alternative to traditional criminal-justice punishment (i.e., prison) in which juvenile offenders are required to engage in directed dialogue with family members and friends over an extended period. With roots in ancient practices in many cultures, this so-called restorative-justice approach is being used in a handful of U.S. cities (including the pilot program in Seattle featured here). Far less expensive than incarcerating offenders, the circles obviously aren’t 100 percent successful, but they’ve proven far more likely to bring young people back to a lawful, productive path than imprisonment. The film follows the case of Andy, a Latinx teen whose distraught family works to lure him away from gang life with the help of circle facilitator Saroeum Phoung, a Cambodian refugee who himself was a hardened gang member in his youth. These sequences are expressively animated — to protect Andy’s identity — and alternate with live-action vérité footage and interviews that trace Saroeum’s own life and the evolution of the circles in the U.S., where formerly skeptical judges and prosecutors come to recognize the value of the method.
Any Given Day (PM: It takes one’s own experience to know what “losing it” means and to make a film about that. Very finely done – SPIRITED BEINGS)
Directed by Margaret Byrne
U.S | 2021 | Documentary
93 minutes | Bulgarian & English
Washington U./Brown
FREE IN-PERSON EVENT
Special $5 Price VIRTUAL ACCESS Only in Missouri and Illinois
A stellar documentary from SLIFF alum Margaret Byrne (“Raising Bertie”), “Any Given Day” follows a trio of participants in Cook County’s Mental Health Court’s probation program as they navigate both their mental illnesses and the addictions and lapses into criminality (generally to feed their drug habits) that complicate their already-difficult lives. The vérité portraits of the three — Angela, Daniel, and Dimitar — are compelling on their own, but the film is further elevated by its confessional nature: Byrne, like her subjects, has episodes of depression, and her empathetic connection deepens the viewers’ understanding of their struggles. During the course of the film, which unfolds over five years, Byrne has her own debilitating mental breakdown that temporarily halts filming, and the reaction of her subjects makes it clear that they’ve developed close bonds and become, at least to some degree, dependent on her attention, which lends some welcome regularity and stability to their often chaotic lives. Because of this intimacy between filmmaker and subjects, the film also becomes a subtle exploration of the fraught, tangled relationships that can affect the evolution of a documentary project, changing the dynamic in both positive and negative (and unpredictable) ways. The longitudinal nature of the film allows us especially privileged access to the subjects, and we see the cycles of their illnesses — the moments of blessed respite, the bleak relapses, the slow, difficult climb out of the depths. “Any Given Day” offers extraordinary insight into the daily struggles of the mentally ill and their unfair entanglement in the criminal-justice system.
**Berrigans: Devout and Dangerous|– UPDATE: Was Sold Out – BUT more tickets are now available!
(PM: Lessons in what “faith in action” can mean, two courageous brothers/priests – as brilliant as Gandhi and Martin Luther King – SPIRITED BEINGS)
Directed by Susan Hagedorn
U.S | 2020 | Documentary
80 minutes | English
VIRTUAL ACCESS Available Worldwide
Some 50 years before BLM and March for Our Lives — before computers, cell phones, and Facebook — priests and brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan shook up the Washington establishment by engaging in nonviolent resistance against the Vietnam War, earning Daniel a spot on the FBI’s list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Nun Elizabeth McAlister — who married Philip in defiance of the Roman Catholic Church — joined with the brothers in protest against war, racism, capital punishment, and nuclear weapons. The Berrigans are amply represented in archival footage and interviews, but their presence is also keenly felt through Dan’s poetry, performed by Liam Neeson, and Philip’s revealing letters, read by Bill Pullman. The New Haven Independent writes: “This absorbing film contains news footage from the trio’s multiple arrests and trials — including the brothers’ roles as part of the Catonsville Nine, a group of Catholic activists whose actions sparked a movement that helped end the draft — as well as archival interviews with each of the three, Philip and Elizabeth’s children, and numerous peace activists who knew them. All this helps illuminate the trio’s engrossing journey and educate the viewer about their vital work, and its effect on them, their family, and the anti-war movement as a whole. If you did not know the story of the Berrigans before this film, it will soon become one you will be eager to share with others.”
Climate change is huge, scary, and highly politicized, and the relentless bad news can prove overwhelming: flooding in the Midwest, fires consuming California, seas rising, temperatures escalating, glaciers melting. But what if there is a solution that is proven, available, and scalable, and has no ill effects or unforeseen consequences? All that’s required is taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, where it traps heat and disturbs the water cycle, and putting it back into the soil through regenerative agricultural practices. With just these simple shifts, the soil becomes more flood-proof and drought-proof, and improves yields. “To Which We Belong” highlights an array of farmers and ranchers who are already practicing regenerative agriculture and profiles the scientists, businesses, and nonprofits who are working on financial incentives that will lead us to reduce — and eventually reverse — climate change on a global scale. By leaving behind conventional practices that are no longer profitable or sustainable, these unsung heroes are not only improving the health of the soil and the sea but also saving their own livelihoods — and our planet.
Don’t forget the great many Narrative and Documentary Shorts
– And that’s just the Docs, not the Narrative Shorts –
Laure Adler & Ses Invités/Ses sujets
MEMRI![Arte Reportage Magazine d’Actualité Internationale [abonnez-vous aux podcasts!]](https://www.arte.tv/i18n/3838018,property=data,v=1.png "Magazine d’Actualité Internationale [abonnez-vous aux podcasts!]")
Arte Reportage
Frontline
Independent Lens