TIFF 2022, Post the Last
Sep. 27th, 2022 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedI've come to the back end of the fest, and through sheer luck this is where most of my favourite movies of the fest were.
Sweet As
More than one review has described this as an Australian Breakfast Club, and that's not far off. Except in this film, the kids are being shipped off to a photo safari trip in the Australian outback, and the main character, Murra, is an Indigenous girl who desperately needs a break and a direction. The broad strokes of the movie are what you'd expect - the kids fuck up, they bond, they have crushes, they figure things out - but a combination of the stunning Australian landscape and a charismatic lead performance by Shantae Barnes-Cowan as Murra make it something special.
Aftersun
Follows a girl and her dad on a vacation in Turkey that manages to be somehow both idyllic and foreboding. Calum is a divorced dad, and has brought his daughter, Sophie, on a vacation to a Turkish resort that it becomes clear he can ill-afford. Adding to the tension is the fact that Calum, while loving, always seems to be on the verge of doing something that might endanger either himself or Sophie. (He spends the first part of the vacation with his arm in a cast that's never explained.) But in spite of the sense of unease, there's also a clearly loving relationship between the two. This is really gorgeous and well worth a watch.
The Eternal Daughter
Director Joanna Hogg, who's made some pretty fantastic movies including The Souvenir, Parts 1 and 2, here directs Tilda Swinton in two roles. Swinton plays both a middle-aged writer and her elderly mother on a trip to a hotel that seems bereft of any other guests. The film kicks off with a taxi driver telling the pair a ghost story about the hotel they're about to stay at, a beginning that gives the whole film a creepy unease. The film is about memory and ghosts, though maybe not the kind you're expecting. Without saying too much, it reminds me of a more melancholy take on Petite Maman, which was my favourite film by far of last year's festival, and equally worth checking out.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
This film manages to be both a call to arms against the fossil fuel industry and a tense heist film, where the heist is blowing up a pipeline. We get flashbacks of each members of the group and how they've reached the point where they're willing to risk jail for their convictions, and we see the planning that goes into managing to blow up a pipeline without loss of life or more environmental damage. The director was at the screening, and said that one of their touchstones in making the film was Ocean's Eleven, and that totally tracks. It's both fun and thought-provoking.
Sweet As
More than one review has described this as an Australian Breakfast Club, and that's not far off. Except in this film, the kids are being shipped off to a photo safari trip in the Australian outback, and the main character, Murra, is an Indigenous girl who desperately needs a break and a direction. The broad strokes of the movie are what you'd expect - the kids fuck up, they bond, they have crushes, they figure things out - but a combination of the stunning Australian landscape and a charismatic lead performance by Shantae Barnes-Cowan as Murra make it something special.
Aftersun
Follows a girl and her dad on a vacation in Turkey that manages to be somehow both idyllic and foreboding. Calum is a divorced dad, and has brought his daughter, Sophie, on a vacation to a Turkish resort that it becomes clear he can ill-afford. Adding to the tension is the fact that Calum, while loving, always seems to be on the verge of doing something that might endanger either himself or Sophie. (He spends the first part of the vacation with his arm in a cast that's never explained.) But in spite of the sense of unease, there's also a clearly loving relationship between the two. This is really gorgeous and well worth a watch.
The Eternal Daughter
Director Joanna Hogg, who's made some pretty fantastic movies including The Souvenir, Parts 1 and 2, here directs Tilda Swinton in two roles. Swinton plays both a middle-aged writer and her elderly mother on a trip to a hotel that seems bereft of any other guests. The film kicks off with a taxi driver telling the pair a ghost story about the hotel they're about to stay at, a beginning that gives the whole film a creepy unease. The film is about memory and ghosts, though maybe not the kind you're expecting. Without saying too much, it reminds me of a more melancholy take on Petite Maman, which was my favourite film by far of last year's festival, and equally worth checking out.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
This film manages to be both a call to arms against the fossil fuel industry and a tense heist film, where the heist is blowing up a pipeline. We get flashbacks of each members of the group and how they've reached the point where they're willing to risk jail for their convictions, and we see the planning that goes into managing to blow up a pipeline without loss of life or more environmental damage. The director was at the screening, and said that one of their touchstones in making the film was Ocean's Eleven, and that totally tracks. It's both fun and thought-provoking.
