First, the good news: India In a Day moves quickly. As a fan of 2011’s Life In a Day (also co-produced by Ridley Scott), I can admit that Kevin MacDonald’s doc had sagging stretches of unhelpful video. The filmmaker and his editor were too comfortable, which meant they often forgo their timeline.
The Unknown Girl marks another incredible achievement by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne. Following up their equally brilliant Two Days, One Night, the Daredennes deploy their clinically austere style to great means in The Unknown Girl, which doubly serves as an investigation and character study.
Written and directed by award-winning Belgian filmmaker Peter Monsaert, Le Ciel Flamand – which translates to “Flemish Heaven” in English – centers around a seasoned brothel owner, Sylvie (Sara Vertongen), as she attempts to protect her six-year-old daughter, Eline (Esra Vandenbussche), from the often violent reality of the family business. The film also stars Wim Willaert (Offline, Cafard) as Eline’s uncle Dirk, a bus driver with whom she spends the afternoons while her mother is at…
Let’s Rap co-stars Emma Hunter and Kristian Bruun reunite in Molly McGlynn’s coy short film 3-Way (Not Calling).
Contemporary cinephilia places – at times – undue emphasis on the auteur in relation to their work and in relation to the works of others. Intertwined authorship and intertextuality are the two most recurrent approaches in film criticism. As such, it’s easy to rationalize the existence of the Hitchcock/Truffaut: Magnificent Obsessions retrospective at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, given the sheer amount of discourse written on the famous relationship of Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut.
In the small town of Australia’s Warrnambool, there’s been a steady drop-off of fairy penguins. The stubby animals think they’re safe at a sanctuary on Middle Island, but end up being dinner for foxes. Not only is this bad for the animals, but this has also put a damper on the sanctuary’s future; causing its relevance to dwindle.
British filmmaker Philip Ridley’s The Reflecting Skin hasn’t screened in Toronto since its Canadian premiere at TIFF in 1990. Given its vibrant formalism and unconventional approach to genre, Ridley’s first feature simply may have been unable to find a broader audience. However, the film works well for cult film audiences.
By: Shahbaz Khayambashi Lenny Abrahamson follows Frank, his underrated study of the effects of mental isolation on the human psyche, with the TIFF People’s Choice Award-winning Room, which looks at the other side of the matter: the effects of physical isolation on the human psyche. The film tells the story of a woman (Brie Larson) and her five year old son (Jacob Tremblay), both of whom have been kept prisoners in a man’s shed for seven…
By: Shannon Page Wylie Writes had the opportunity to sit down with director Adam Salky (Dare), as well as writers Amy Koppelman and Paige Dylan, about their film I Smile Back which stars Sarah Silverman as a drug and alcohol abusing New Jersey housewife trying to keep herself and her family together. Koppelman and Dylan co-wrote the screenplay, based off of Koppelman’s 2008 novel by the same name. “The novel was incredibly helpful in making…
By: Addison Wylie Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo, The Tracey Fragments, Pontypool) is a very busy filmmaker. In 2010 alone, the award-winning director released three films. If I don’t like one of McDonald’s films, I can at least find something I can appreciate about his filmmaking, but his latest horror Hellions suggests to me that the next best thing for his career may be some downtime. The main problem with Hellions, a film about a…