Festival Circuit 2025

[DarkImbecile]

Saw Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life early this morning, trying to catch the premiere of Bugonia, a screening of Hamnet, and either the Jordanian film All That’s Left of You by Cherien Debis or Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent.

[Sloper]

I was also struck by the closing montage. Linklater revisits the spaces and objects that seemed so significant for the characters the night before, now rejoining the banal everyday fabric of life in a world too big and ever-evolving and varied to linger on even the most momentous of events — personal, political, environmental, whatever. Despite the inherent impermanence of our lived experiences and their mutable significance in our life, it still seems really important to try to remember and value them wherever they land on the spectrum from painful to joyful. A lot of the people, objects, and signifiers that defined my life for so long have changed over the last 24 months, but they still matter a lot to me — and that sentiment includes this place and many of the people reading this.

This makes me want to watch Before Sunrise again: I've only seen it once and also in an 'emotionally significant' context, so it might be interesting to re-visit in my forties... Your comments about it remind me of the ending of L'eclisse (which most things do, to be fair), but also of the way Akerman films 'empty' spaces in New York in News From Home, to reflect on how her relationship with 'home', her mother, herself, and the world can be affected by context or the passage of time. And as a fellow lurker-more-than-poster here, I definitely know what you mean about how this applies to the forum, which I've spent at least some time in every day since May 2007. Nice to see you back!

[brundlefly]

!

Joining the chorus welcoming you back to the banal everyday fabric of posting here.

[Toland's Mitchell]

Good to see you back, DI! Your insight around here had been missed. Hope things are better now.

[DarkImbecile]

Saw Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life early this morning, trying to catch the premiere of Bugonia, a screening of Hamnet, and either the Jordanian film All That’s Left of You by Cherien Debis or Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent.

Been slammed as usual in the thick of the festival, but quick update, with full write-ups to follow this week after my brain recovers from transitioning into sleep-deprived mush:

Saturday: Managed to just barely get into the premiere screening of Bugonia, but then missed out on Hamnet which scrambled my schedule and necessitated ending up in Werner Herzog’s Ghost Elephants and a screening of Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (both were fine for their respective genres/modes, with each sporting a surprisingly successful element amidst the more standard components).

Sunday: Loved the delicately realized and very successful Sentimental Value, which pairs Joachim Trier’s ongoing streak of precisely observed and emotionally piercing scripts with an even more amazing cast than usual. Reinsve is as great as you would expect, but Stellan Skarsgard and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas deliver standout supporting performances, alongside Elle Fanning bringing surprising depth and vulnerability to what easily could have been a thankless and shallow role.

I spent the first 45 minutes of Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon thinking I was going to really like it, between the sharp, witty script and Ethan Hawke’s verbose, mannered performance as an alcoholic, spiraling Lorenz Hart. Unfortunately, at a certain point it became apparent that the film wasn’t going to have another gear, and as it hit the same beats again and again you could feel the air leaking out of the room. Still a nice showcase for Hawke, and Andrew Scott and Bobby Canavale are also very good supporting roles.

Least surprising take from me incoming: Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet is fantastic, two truly great lead performances supporting a script that carefully and crushingly interweaves personal tragedy and the universality of great art. Buckley is, as widely reported by now, devastating, and Mescal nearly comes from behind to match her during the transcendent final sequence. Zhao delivers on multiple levels, as the film boasts mystical, haunting visuals, sound design with remarkable depth and power, and some remarkable child performances. If I had to identify a solitary quibble, it’s that the score is largely derived from pre-existing, oft-heard pieces (I’m not the best at identifying scores, but I think Richter is heavily taken from — effectively, certainly, but the lack of originality stood out to me amidst the rest).

Still processing a late sneak preview of Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, but for those who roll with Del Toro’s style it delivers the top-level production craft (save a single notably unsuccessful CGI sequence) you’d expect alongside the most epic scope this story has ever been granted. Del Toro’s script digs deep into a cinematically under-explored thematic vein of the narrative, and even if he bumps up against the very good ceiling he can’t seem to get past, this is still among his better films.

[DarkImbecile]

Catching Laura Poitras’ Cover-Up this morning, then aiming for at least two of Angel Karia’s Riz Ahmed-starring, contemporary London-set Hamlet, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, and Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You.

[DarkImbecile]

Had an excellent last day of the festival:

*In Cover-Up, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus are able to compellingly capture Seymour Hersh’s substantial journalistic achievements, the outsized and inconsistent nature of his personality, and the ways he missteps and has been misled in his pursuit of murky truths. The film is extremely well edited with the deft visual choices you’d expect from Poitras, including some very dryly humorous editing juxtapositions.

In his Q&A afterward, moderated by the great documentarian Ezra Edelman (OJ: Made in America), Hersh bent his response to almost every question posed to him into a commentary on the genocide in Gaza and the malevolence of Netanyahu and his government. A few hours later, I bumped into Hersh and was able to chat with him for a few minutes, which was surreal as someone who vividly remembers reading his work 25 years ago as a freshman in college.

*Aneil Karia’s Hamlet is one of the most vivid, vibrant, and radical reshapings of Shakespeare I’ve ever seen, centered around an exceptional performance by Riz Ahmed, whose electric take on the prince plays to both the ferocity and instability of the character. The most exciting part of the film, though, is the shift of setting into contemporary London’s South Asian community, where the kingdom is a real estate empire displacing established low-income communities and where the centerpiece play/dance sequence incorporates the cultural milieu in a way that is truly showstopping. Some purists might take issue with the liberties taken with the structure of the play, but I found it a real joy. There are also some great supporting performances, including Timothy Spall’s dyspeptic Polonius, Joe Alwyn’s wounded and vulnerable Laertes, and Sheeba Chaddha, whose climactic scene is the Queen delivers so much wordlessly.

*The word out of Cannes was that Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound was a disappointment, so maybe it was benefiting from lowered expectations when I found it to be a delicate romance built around small gestures and quiet details. Some in the audience seemed to have trouble with its deliberate pacing, the first half has the advantage of a dozen or so really excellent performances of rural folk songs that the second half notably lacks, and it does have probably one too many endings, but overall I found it to be a very good adult drama featuring yet more powerful performances from Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor.

*Finally, I just snuck into Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You for my last screening, coming in after the house lights were down and just before her introduction of the film. The drama, which she also wrote, produced, and co-starred in, illustrates how one Palestine family has experienced and passed their pain and grief since their expulsion from the new state of Israel in 1948 down through the generations, all the way to just before the October 7th attacks and the launch of the Gaza war. A crucial plot point becomes a metaphor for the conflict, one with which the family takes years to reconcile themselves. Very solid, emotional, and makes the audience feel the humanity of the family.


Some full write ups and rankings tomorrow …

[cantinflas]

Venice press conferences for Bigelow's A House of Dynamite and Van Sant's Dead Man's Wire

[Never Cursed]

Venice Competition Awards:

Golden Lion: Jim Jarmusch for Father Mother Sister Brother
Grand Jury Prize: Kaouther Ben Hania for The Voice of Hind Rajab
Special Jury Prize: Gianfranco Rosi for Below the Clouds
Silver Lion: Benny Safdie for The Smashing Machine
Volpi Cup for Best Actress: Xin Zhilei for The Sun Rises on Us All
Volpi Cup for Best Actor: Toni Servillo for La grazia
Best Screenplay: Valérie Donzelli and Gilles Marchand for At Work
Marcello Mastroianni Award: Luna Wedler for Silent Friend

The present rumor is that the awards were the subject of a Cannes 2016-style internal squabble, where jury president Alexander Payne tried to deny Kaouther Ben Hania's film any awards because of his disagreement with its subject matter (against a majority of the jury who wanted to give it the Golden Lion), leading to Fernanda Torres to threaten, in turn, to quit the jury and a compromise as seen above being reached. Nothing for Lanthimos, Park Chan-wook, or Mona Fastvold, and the awards for Director and Actress seem at odds with the general critical reception of those films

[hearthesilence]

Is this the first time Jarmusch has won a top prize at a major festival? I remember Broken Flowers getting the Grand Prix at Cannes (which got some amusing reactions from those involved in the film - I think Murray said something like "there's no shame in second"), and until now that might've been the highest he got.

[cantinflas]

His first words upon accepting the Golden Lion: Oh shit

Too good. I'm hoping this coupled with Cate Blanchett in the cast means it will screen in cinemas here.

Is this the first time Jarmusch has won a top prize at a major festival? I remember Broken Flowers getting the Grand Prix at Cannes (which got some amusing reactions from those involved in the film - I think Murray said something like "there's no shame in second"), and until now that might've been the highest he got.

I can see on his Cannes page that he's won a few awards there but this takes the cake.

[Omensetter]

This doesn't look like the worst set of winners. A lot of people were pushing for Ben Hania's film, of course, but if I were a jury member, I'd resent having to assess it alongside the other films. I'm not much a fan of Ben Hania, and I find it ethically dubious even as I am on the filmmaker's side politically.

A lot were pushing for Bigelow and Park, but rewarding a well-received quiet film from a veteran, revered filmmaker over the genre films feels refreshing. Kathryn Bigelow's Netflix White House thriller will be fine. Benny Safdie at Director seems off, though.

(At Cannes 2005, Jury President Emir Kusturica was pushing Broken Flowers, and Varda was pushing Haneke's Caché, resulting in the second Dardennes win. Varda was correct, and Jarmusch did seem a bit embarrassed in his runner-up speech that he won over Hou Hsiao-hsien.)

[dda1996a]

Jarmusch won the Camera d'Or for Stranger Than Paradise, so it depends on how you rank the awards in Cannes.

[Never Cursed]

This doesn't look like the worst set of winners. A lot of people were pushing for Ben Hania's film, of course, but if I were a jury member, I'd resent having to assess it alongside the other films. I'm not much a fan of Ben Hania, and I find it ethically dubious even as I am on the filmmaker's side politically.

I mean I understand it might be a tough position, but why "resent" and "ethically dubious?" Should people who make stridently political films not submit them to competition sections for fear of putting the jurors in a tough spot?

[domino harvey]

Doesn’t it use the actual audio recordings of the dying child depicted within the dramatized version of the film? I can see that being a fair objection, or perhaps being made to feel like one has to vote for it because one agrees with its intentions but not its craft

[yoloswegmaster]

There also seems to be backlash against Benny Safdie's win since many people think it came against the expense of Park Chan-Wook. Mind you that 99% of the people complaining about it haven't seen either film, so make of that what you will.

[domino harvey]

I haven’t seen anyone defend the Safdie win, but there are always
random oddball jury choices that go against the critical and/or popular grain

[yoloswegmaster]

The Safdies seemed to have ardent fans with the LB/Twitter crowd, which makes it odd to see backlash against one of them. Speaking of the Safdies, it's been noted that Benny didn't mention his brother when he was giving a shout-out to family members during his speech.

[hearthesilence]

The present rumor is that the awards were the subject of a Cannes 2016-style internal squabble...

Alexander Payne denies this happened:

Rumors began swirling on social media on Saturday that there was tension in the jury room over deliberations for the Golden Lion, with some unfounded allegations that a member of the jury threatened to quit when it became clear “Hind Rajab” wouldn’t win the Golden Lion.

But Payne said that never happened. “One of my jurors threatened to quit? I did?! No, did someone threaten to quit? No. I think we know … not to believe everything we read online,” he clarified.

[thirtyframesasecond]

There may be no smoke without fire but seeing as No Other Land won an Oscar, there is precedent for films that tackle the Israel/Palestine conflict (with sympathy towards the latter) winning awards.

[therewillbeblus]

Boston-area residents: IFF Boston's Fall Focus festival is doubling this year(!!), with two long weekends (Oct. 9-12 and Oct. 30-Nov. 2) at the Brattle. They obviously knew my wedding date and decided to work around it, so expect a great lineup

[knives]

Congratulations on the subtle drop there.

[Never Cursed]

TIFF accidentally spoiled its awards in a press release made public too early. Chloe Zhao's Hamnet won it, with Frankenstein and Knives Out 3 as the runners-up. Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, meanwhile, won the International People's Choice Award, somewhat out of left field.

In an enormous embarrassment to the festival, The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue won the Documentary award.

[yoloswegmaster]

I personally don't think No Other Choice winning was a surprise, as the screenings went well (so much so that they added an extra screening). The only surprise is that the Israeli doc won best documentary.

[Never Cursed]

I personally don't think No Other Choice winning was a surprise, as the screenings went well (so much so that they added an extra screening). The only surprise is that the Israeli doc won best documentary.

That's true, I only was a little taken aback because the critical reception to the film has been a little muted and it did nothing at Venice