The Teachers’ Lounge
By: Jolie Featherstone Ilker Çatak’s award-winning feature The Teachers’ Lounge is a scintillating, modern-day fable.
Mongrel Media
Freud’s Last Session
Movie goers who have claimed big screen adaptations of stage plays are stilted may be ready to dismiss Freud’s Last Session, but I hope they give it a chance. This two-hander between Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins (as neurologist Sigmund Freud) and Matthew Goode (as British author C.S. Lewis) is riveting and reminds viewers about the power of great acting.
Immediate Family
Denny Tedesco’s Immediate Family is the ideal spiritual sequel to his doc debut The Wrecking Crew, and a great example of a comfort film. I’ve seen this documentary twice now: once to review it, the second just to revisit the groovy atmosphere.
The Stones and Brian Jones
Nick Broomfield (Marianna & Leonard: Words of Love) returns to musical subject matter with his sympathetic and tragic doc The Stones and Brian Jones.
Hands That Bind
Kyle Armstrong’s sophomore feature Hands That Bind is a western that’s more introverted than expected.
The Delinquents
A reclusive bank employee, Morán (Daniel Elías), is tempted to use his privilege to take advantage of his workplace. His plot to rob the bank is on standby until the perfect moment – cue Román (Esteban Bigliardi), a teller who leaves work early and is used as an incidental accomplice once Morán steals $650,000. Román, now more aware, is brought into the fold by the amateur thief and is told to hold the money while…
The Persian Version
As the youngest child in a large family of Iranian immigrants, Leila (Layla Mohammadi) has always felt like she hasn’t lived up to expectations; especially her often distracted mother Shireen (Niousha Noor). In her current years as a young adult, Leila has felt more distance grown between her and her mom. And as an expectant mother after a one-night-stand with an eccentric actor (Tom Byrne), Leila only anticipates the worse.
TIFF ’23: ‘The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed’
By: Jolie Featherstone Joanna Arnow directs, writes, edits, and stars in the smartly droll The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed, a directorial feature debut that takes an unflinching, but not bleak, look at Millennial ennui.
Passages
Passages has a great introduction. Film director Tomas (Franz Rogowski) orders actors around and painstakingly focuses on someone’s inability to walk down a flight of stairs. As Tomas shows the actor how to walk down the stairs, it becomes very obvious that Tomas wants to be idolized. He does this by being intimidating to get what he wants.