welcome to my journal
Below are some thoughts, reviews, and ongoing projects of mine.
Below are some thoughts, reviews, and ongoing projects of mine.
At 9 am each day in early September I would roll up to the festival, drowsy and hoping for a reasonably short line for the screenings I have no assurance of getting into. After 6 years in Toronto, the mystique of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has finally worn off enough to throw myself completely into the frenzy without shyness. Seeing only films I could catch on the fly with no pre-bought tickets, I watched 29 feature films across 10 or so days. The festival had highs and lows, finally seeing films I had been anticipating for months (Dahomey dir. Mati Diop) and missing others I waited in line for over 5 hours to get into (The Room Next Door dir. Pedro Almodóvar).
TIFF’s carnivalesque atmosphere reveals itself in the two hours of lining up before any screening. With only a pass and a couple of gifted tickets, this was the first year I’ve taken a chance on the rush line. I spoke to strangers alongside you about their favourites, collectively feeling bad for the woman in front who gets shat on by a pigeon. I giggled hearing “two tickets to see The Nightbitch,” “Have you got A Missing Part,” and “Are you Queer? Okay, who here is not Queer?” as audience members try to sell their tickets last minute. I failed to avoid standing with the guy who kept shouting “bad vibes” about the line that we all had only a slim chance of entry despite hours of waiting. It required stamina, stillness, company and copious amounts of time.
My favourites of the festival (in no particular order) were Anora, Universal Language, Dahomey, Queer, and Souleymane’s Story, with other honourable mentions like Pepe, By The Stream, No Other Land, The Shrouds and Drama 1882 that have been lingering in my mind since. Here is a little more about every film I was able to see.
Pepe
dir. Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias
Dominican Republic, Germany, France, Namibia | 2024 | 123m
Pepe is an elliptical retelling of the journey of Pablo Escobar’s hippos across continents over various decades. The story is told through vignettes of conversations and the hippos projected interior monologue with a keen sense of humour that feels almost animal-like in nature. The eclectic use of rhythmic sound placed the film surprisingly amongst other techno rhythmic soundtracks on the rise in film this year. The film’s visuals are stunning and thematically in sync with the hippos’ magical, absurd internal monologue juxtaposed with minimal, mundane conversations of the humans around them. The film has a variety of formats from 16mm in colour and black and white to night vision, flashing light footage, underwater shots and aerial drone footage which contribute to the film’s tactile quality. The philosophical animal provocations are more existential and personal than moral, with interjections of the humorous honking hippo sounds throughout that are wildly charming and have stuck with me since.
Caught by the Tides
dir. Jia Zhang-Ke
China | 2024 | 111m
From my limited experience with Jia Zhange-Ke’s work, this felt like a perfect companion to Still Life (2006) almost to the point where it was a necessary pre-requisite to watching the film. Caught by the Tides is a wonderful deep dive into a thread from Still Life that follows a specific couple spanning several decades of their changing relationship as they part and find one another in 2006 and again in 2022. The modern portion of the film gives more space emotionally for the characters to grow and has a softer, subtler reunion. At the same time, the older footage looks like it has been lifted directly from Still Life, carrying forward some character’s stories and reprising the same early digital video aesthetics.
Drama 1882
dir. Wael Shawky
Egypt | 2024 | 45m
“Drama 1882” is a stunning piece with meticulous, artful production and a slow, impactful pace. This theatrical newly devised Arabic opera plays on an alternative history of colonialism and migration that centres in Egypt. It is highly political and thought-provoking with beautiful costumes, sets and a meditative attention to movement and flow. While slow, this piece is densely packed with drama and history and demands a second watch to fully grasp the emotion and meaning of all thrown at you. As a piece from the art world, featuring at the Egyptian Pavillion at the Venice Biennale this year, this may be a difficult piece to hunt down but is all the more worth it to experience.
Diciannove
dir. Giovanni Tortorici
Italy, United Kingdom | 2024 | 108m
A 19-year-old Leonardo goes through the isolation, awkwardness and growing pains of young adulthood in Italy. Between ambiguous sexuality and unassisted mental health issues, this film has an honest and pitiless portrayal of coming-of-age as Leonardo falls in equal parts into both fortune and the unfortunate consequences of his reclusive and stuck-up nature. The film, a debut of the director with executive producer Luca Guadagnino shot on 35mm film, has varying visual formats and narrative modes that felt incongruous at times but demonstrated creative, risky and enjoyable cinematography with well-matched acting and writing.
Dead Talents Society
dir. John Hsu
Taiwan | 2024 | 110m
This was my first Midnight Madness feature of the festival – a program of films that premiere at midnight and feature horror, abstract, weird or innovative stories, aesthetics and directorial visions. The raucous atmosphere and unique programming make this a favourite programming series at the festival and while I went into this a little wary, it turned out to be a more of a light feel-good movie in the horror genre. The film's premise revolves around haunting in the afterlife having a viral influencer twist as ghosts must depend on their legacy as urban legends to survive. A light-hearted take on death, work, legacy, talent and found family, the film had some surface-level takes on online culture and fun, schlocky elements.
They Will Be Dust
dir. Carlos Marques-Marcet
Spain, Italy, Switzerland | 2024 | 106m
They Will Be Dust follows a charming and devoted old couple who decide together to pursue assisted suicide after one of them is diagnosed with a terminal tumour. With vivid yet cozy visuals of homemaking and family, this film is incredibly emotional as it constructs a lush, realistic and intricate network of familial relationships around a powerful central love story. The dancing and acapella singing seemed almost distracting opposite the dramatic and emotionally complex performances, especially by Angela Molina playing Claudia, which are the true powerhouse of the film.
Memoir of a Snail
dir. Adam Elliot
Australia | 2024 | 95m
A new animation by Adam Elliot, this stop-motion feature is a highly stylized first-person narrative in which a woman accounts her traumatic life story involving abandonment, sibling separation, eating issues and homophobic violence. The craft of the animation is exquisite characterized by Elliot’s large, dark-circled eyes, monochrome pallet and Australian setting. The style parallels the darkness and vulnerability of the film's narrative, told almost entirely in a voice-over which is somewhat unnerving at first but becomes personable and intimate by its climax.
Friendship
Andrew DeYoung
United States of America | 2024 | 100m
After 4 hours of lining up on the concrete outside, we poured into Princess of Whales amid a crowd with many familiar faces from other festival goers. As a fan of Tim Robinson from many of my friends’ introductions to his work, this completely met my expectations delivering a high-intensity comedy revolving around etiquette and social faux pas. As an examination of longing for adult male friendship, this feels like an evolution of "I Love You, Man" with Paul Rudd’s supporting role to cement the connection. This had some surprisingly fun cinematography and wonderful, simple comedic writing and pacing that situates it within the “Uncut Gems” and “Shiva Baby” social thriller genre.
Triumph
dir. Petar Valchanov, Kristina Grozeva
Bulgaria, Greece | 2024 | 97m
Inspired by true events, “Triumph” is a strange and subtle film about power, mystique and femininity with the backdrop of military pro-space research in late twentieth-century Bulgaria. As a young psychic is brought onto a research military project, her mentorship by another older psychic sours as the two women compete by subtly sexually manipulating their way around the army interested in an ancient extra-terrestrial presence. Set on a hill in the countryside in Bulgaria, the film has beautiful scenery and a strong wonderful performance by Maria Bakalova, continuing an impressive international career from her recent work in the modern slasher Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022).
The Wild Robot
dir. Chris Sanders
United States of America | 2024 | 101m
The Wild Robot continues recent big-budget animation’s foray into unique, stylized visuals with painting-like imagery and a concentration on lush, immersive landscapes. When a robot is accidentally abandoned on an island and imprinted on a baby bird, it rejects its programming in favour of learning, survival and making family. Based on a book series, this promising story is somewhat undermined by its overdetermined dialogue which explicitly explains and outlines its themes of found family without trust in a discerning audience to read subtly.
The Last of The Sea Women
dir. Sue Kim
United States of America | 2024 | 87m
The Last of the Sea Women is a perfect example of a niche topic documentary that perfectly captures the lifestyles, issues and ambience of a niche group of people. This film follows a group of Haenyeo, a professional diver who harvests sea urchins, many of whom are women over 70. This is a provocation on modern industry, labour, gender, age and climate with some of the sweetest old ladies. The film shows they still have the agency and ability as a community to tell their story and the eagerness to keep their legacy alive.
Anora
dir. Sean Baker
United States of America | 2024 | 138m
One of the most-anticipated films of the festival, Anora was surprising and charming with high energy, a comedic undertone and breakneck pacing. Anora, an exotic dancer living in New York, falls in love and marries a young Russian heir to a fortune living recklessly in the city away from his parents' controlling gaze. This film builds its characters and their relationships with such generosity and complexity that allows for thrilling and moving interpersonal exchanges between near-strangers in moments of stress. This film’s sharp editing, ensemble chemistry and a stand-out performance by Mikey Madison as the titular Anora make for the film’s position as the height of the festival. I will be seeing this again the moment it comes out.
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire
dir. Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
United States of America | 2024 | 75m
The film is a meditation on Suzanne Césaire's small body of collaboration and works until 1945 and her lack of published output afterward. The end of her public work after this point is posited as a redirected energy toward motherhood or a deliberate withholding of her later writings from the public eye. In tackling work the public is not about to experience, this film approaches Suzanne’s legacy through the filmmaking process, pulling back the curtain of the production to reveal cameras, clapper boards, production assistants reading her writing to the camera in between takes, and the narrator's musings on limitations of motherhood. With motifs of disregarded papers with her writing, Suzanne Césaire's lack of public work post-1945 ends up being prioritized over a more in-depth examination of her work and legacy that we do have access to, leaving the film somewhat emptier than it should be. Almost in the form of an essay film, this has vivid images shot on film and juxtaposes dramatic theatre-like studio shots and outdoor shots of lush gardens.
Souleymane’s Story
dir. Boris Lojkine
France | 2024 | 93m
This film takes place over three days in the life of bike courier Souleymane, an immigrant from Guinea, leading up to his interview for asylum. Rich in its themes on labour, transnationalism, status and housing instability, community and capitalism, this film tackles delicate and complicated socio-political issues with tenderness for its characters and a thrilling pace in its storytelling. The titular performance is absorbent and the backdrop of Paris is painted in new light from the perspective of a bicycle. I have great respect for the director's approach to assisting and working with marginalized communities and favour for low-budget filmmaking which he is spoken about more at length in his promotion of the film. This is one of my more surprising favourites of the festival.
The Village Next to Paradise
dir. Mo Harawe
Austria, France, Germany, Somalia | 2024 | 133m
A family unit tries to make ends meet in rural modern-day Somalia amid the intermittent threat of drone strikes. One of the slower films I saw at the festival, this film lets its performances and story breathe, allowing the more subtle emotions and characters’ actions to succeed in their impact. This is especially the case for the young Cigaal (Ahmed Mohamud Saleban) who has a strikingly subtle portrayal of emotions and disappointment as his close relationship with his father is strained by his family’s financial instability. With mostly static, slow cinematography, and a selective yet saturated colour palette, the meticulous mise-ens-scene is given full display as the formal highlight of this film.
Universal Language
dir. Matthew Rankin
Canada | 2024 | 89m
Imagining a world in which Canada's two official languages are French and Farsi, Rankin paints a mundane, charming and colourful picture of the possibilities of community in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Absurd, warm, funny and surprising, this connects two unlikely local cultures in a mixture that's something wonderful. Chock full of Canadian references (including Louis Riel's grave), suburban highways, brutalist architecture and gobbling turkeys, this vibrant and unique film blew me away.
SATURDAY NIGHT
dir. Jason Reitman
United States of America | 2024 | 109m
This retelling of the intense lead-up to the film premiere of Saturday Night Live on television is,liike the best moments of SNL, both witty and quick. This film becomes somewhat burdened by its large cast as it attempts to give most of them an emotional arc in two hours. It doesn't do a great job of explaining the cast for those less versed in SNL’s history but for those who are, it offers several stand-out performances, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase in particular.
Anytime Anywhere
dir. Milad Tangshir
Italy | 2024 | 80m
A retelling of Bicycle Thieves in current-day Italy, this film brings in themes of morality, justice, circumstance and diaspora with an app delivery modern take and solid star performance. This was my second bike courier movie of the festival and it is interesting to see the nuances across each example of this narrative. It does not reach the emotional heights or thematic exploration of the original but still has much to offer as a modern adaptation.
By the Stream
dir. Hong Sangsoo
South Korea | 2024 | 111m
Hong Sangsoo’s latest follows a teacher at a women's university who calls up her actor-director uncle to assist in making a play for her students, reintroducing him into her community. This film provides a new vision of minimalist filmmaking with restrained cinematography, costuming, makeup, and editing. This reminded me of Rohmer’s films as its characterization is revealed through extended conversations between characters and their reflections on relationships, family and senses of self. The long static two shots of characters, sometimes lasting over ten minutes, emphasize the strength of the acting and direction.
No Other Land
dir. Various Directors
Palestine, Norway | 2024 | 95m
This collaborative film documents the events from 2019 - 2023 involving the forced removals of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta village in the West Bank. It is hard to put into words the complex layers of emotion, labour, courage and tragedy articulated through this work. Showing the developing activist and journalist relationships over the period of the documentary as well as the emotional and physical toll of instability and political targeting reveals nuances and depths to this ongoing atrocity. This is an essential work - anyone who has the opportunity to see this film absolutely must.
Space Cowboy
dir. Marah Strauch, Bryce Leavitt
United States of America | 2024 | 98m
Space Cowboy is a pretty straightforward documentary highlighting a much more extraordinary subject. The best part of this film is the main subject Joe Jennings's archival footage from his skydiving career. Jennings' cinematography is quite spectacular and spacy with no sense of up or down, perfectly simulating the act of skydiving. It is fascinating to see how his work evolves over the decades of his career as the sport of skydiving changes, he gains and loses close collaborators and engages in increasingly risky stunts.
The Shrouds
dir. David Cronenberg
Canada, France | 2024 | 119m
Cronenberg's tendency to match art form with style continues as The Shroud's grave screen surveillance systems parallel the film's sleek, uncanny aesthetics. After the death of his beloved wife, a man designs a high-tech surveillance system to watch one’s loved ones decay in their gaves. As much as this is a meditation on grief, this film has an awkward humour built on Yiddish jokes, conspiracy theories and strange outbursts that result in a particular charm and an intuitive emotionality. Vincent Cassel as an off-beat Cronenberg stand-in is essential to this recipe.
An Unfinished Film
dir. Lou Ye
Singapore, Germany | 2024 | 107m
An Unfinished Film depicts a crew getting back together after a decade to finish their film only for their production to be shut down halfway through at the outset of the pandemic in 2020. This brings back so much of the affect and emotional toll of the early lockdown as lack of information and mobility become key ingredients for this film's tonal shift from heartfelt reunion to thriller. The use of phone screens and video calls makes the film's multi-screen aesthetics timely and provocative, bridging the gap between documentary and fiction.
The End
dir. Joshua Oppenheimer
Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, Sweden | 2024 | 148m
Envisioning the end of the world as we know it from the perspective of a well-off family living in a bunker, the introduction of a strange outsider brings up old insecurities and relationship issues in this new musical. This has only gotten worse the more time I’ve had away from it and will not be something I return to. While some of the elements work independently, with strong acting performances, quirky humour, and an interesting production look, the film ultimately suffers from a lack of thematic impact, incohesion and slow pacing. It follows a growing number of recent films with large budgets interested in tackling the climate crises abstract without ever mentioning those issues directly or concerning the discourse around the film with any impact campaign or call for awareness.
Queer
dir. Luca Guadagnino
Italy, United States of America | 2024 | 135m
Adapted from William S. Burroughs’s 1985 novel of the same name, Queer recounts the emotional turns of queerness as the main character Lee pursues unrequited love in Mexico city on a journey of drugs, loneliness and self-realization. This film continues Guadagnino's interest in body-horror pleasure in which bodies morph, break and bend in ways that are equally painful and desirable. The production design is outstanding with a colour palette of blues and yellows. The film toes so well between the real and the dream-like through miniatures, flat backgrounds and visualized surrealist sequences from the original text.
The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos
dir. The Agbajowo Collective
Nigeria, Germany, South Africa, United States of America | 2024 | 101m
This film is a dramatic, immersive and emotive retelling of ongoing housing displacement in Lagos, The film embodies a collaborative approach to storytelling rooted in real experiences and involving the community in the production, in some cases reenacting their acts of defiance. It is a rich representation of the diverse spaces and people in Lagos and the collateral damage to families and communities when corruption and community violence is enacted.
Dahomey
dir. Mati Diop
Benin, France, Senegal | 2024 | 68m
This was my most anticipated of the festival and did not disappoint. The journey of 26 pieces of returned art to Benin from France is told through debates about repatriated art, discussions of recognition of art in different contexts, and surreal internal monologues of the pieces themselves.Despite it short length this film packs in a wealth of philosophical, political and cultural debates that give space of a diversity of voices, perspectives and actions across the journey of these art pieces. Diop is a master of her craft and intentional with every decision, making the audience sit with the weight and meaning of every formal choice, highlighting the “pure cinema” visual storytelling of this work. Haunting, lingering and challenging, her approach to visual storytelling is provocative and immersive.
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band
dir. Thom Zimny
United States of America | 2024 | 99m
This was a spur of the moment last film choice but still this viewing experience had its charms, with an older crowd of loyal fans eager to watch more of Springsteens work at play. The film documents Springsteen’s latest tour, providing insight through interviews into decades-long collaboration and Springsteen’s mellowing over time. Some of the editing and camerawork were jarring but the film makes use of iconic archival footage of Springsteen that lends weight to the history and success of the band.
Over the last several years, I have been making art and experimenting independently in Photography, Film and Video. This has been inspired by my grandmother, a photographer herself, my peers and my academic background in film studies but is largely consistent of self-taught experimentation and results. This page details some of the updates regarding my work, further experiments, new avenues of interest and thought processes relating to my image-based work.
August 2023:While working at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, I participated in several workshops in shooting and developing Super8 and 16mm film in black & white and in colour. I recently participated in a "Film as Object" workshop with the Media Commons at the University of Toronto exploring archival and preservation practices in film. For the summer, I will work as one of the Collections Assessment Assistants at VTape in Toronto. I'm currently working with analogue film and photography and video, I have been working towards shooting collaborative experimental films, documentary video and photography projects.
October 2023: I'm building a darkroom in my basement! I've wanted to have the facilities to practice and make prints in a home studio to strengthen my practice and make it more mobile, hopefully being able to transition my work between my two residences in Johannesburg, South Africa and Toronto, Canada.
February 2024: The darkroom is built! Since October, I've been working on developing B&W 35mm rolls and scanning them at home. This year, my goal is to learn how to bucket develop analog Double 8mm moving-image film and colour still film. My filmmaking using camcorders has continued and I'm currently working on a project for Charlie's Freewheels storytelling club. The project "L'Eau de la Shwin" is inspired by the Super 8 filmmaker Teo Hernandez and revolves around movement and the tactility of bicycle mechanics.