In Praia Formosa<\/em><\/strong>, Julia De Simone very effectively plays with a sense of linear time while blending documentary and fiction to prod at Portugal\u2019s history of colonialism and slavery in Brazil \u2014 and its remnants today. In the vein of the blending of documentary and fiction, Farshad Hashemi\u2019s debut film (of any kind) Me, Maryam, the Children and 26 Others <\/em><\/strong>is a standout, quietly examining the status and positionality of women in Iranian society through the story of a film shoot at the home of a seemingly lonely, isolated woman. This was the most conventional of the few I saw in the Tiger Competition, but its meta-combination of \u201cdocumentary\u201d (the film shoot) and \u201cfiction\u201d (the actual short film being shot) to speculate on the nature of human relationships could conceivably be read in a multitude of more experimental ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coming straight from a festival in Lithuania, I was told that Twittering Soul <\/em><\/strong>was the only Lithuanian film at IFFR, so naturally, I had to check it out. Deimantas Narkevi\u010dius\u2019 meandering piece ties together folktales, tradition, and countryside historical fiction with magical realism \u2014 but the kicker? It\u2019s a film made specifically for 3D viewing and is the first Lithuanian stereoscopic feature film. The anachronistic juxtaposition of content and form was fascinating (and something I have to think about further), but my lack of context really plagued the viewing experience, despite the work showcasing visuals of luscious green fields and a calming sort of mise-en-sc\u00e8ne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rachel MacLean\u2019s DUCK<\/em><\/strong> is a deepfake frenzy in which Sean Connery\u2019s James Bond uncovers a conspiracy around the world\u2019s most powerful people being ducks, including Marilyn Monroe (both played by MacLean herself). This leads to a bloodbath shootout accompanied by other Bonds (again, all played by an uncanny valley deepfaked MacLean). It\u2019s just delightfully perverse, like many of her other works, including her six-minute interactive VR piece, I\u2019m Terribly Sorry<\/em><\/strong>. Screening in the Immersive Media portion of IFFR, it\u2019s a first-person shooter on the dystopian streets of London as Brits with smartphones for heads swarm you, asking for favors \u2014 and you\u2019re equipped with a phone whose blinding camera flash acts as a firearm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most profoundly affecting VR work was Small Acts of Violence<\/em><\/strong> by multidisciplinary artist Aay Liparoto, a 25-minute piece centered around stories by female, non-binary, and transmasculine perpetrators of intimate partner violence. Viewers can fluidly move between three \u201cscenes\u201d depicting loving families, which are accompanied by voiceovers speaking about perpetrating different forms of violence and hurt. It\u2019s a difficult topic to confront (and one might ask if this is platforming perpetrators of domestic abuse), but then it becomes more nuanced, expanding to these eponymous small acts that everybody can likely relate to, whether in the position of perpetrator or victim. \u201cYou were in there a long time!\u201d said the moderator of the work\u2019s exhibition (viewers could opt to exit the experience at any time). I\u2019m spoiled in that I\u2019ve had the luxury of experiencing likely more VR than the average festivalgoer, given my post-secondary education in the heart of Silicon Valley, but the fact that time flew by in Liparoto\u2019s work to me was a measure of its success and its emotional impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then you\u2019re left with some puzzling works like Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn\u2019s truly bizarre Dream Team<\/em><\/strong>, which, on paper, is the sort of wacky I\u2019m a sucker for: a surreal satire of \u201890s basic cable police procedurals. I couldn\u2019t latch on to many of the gags, but maybe I\u2019m not familiar with this sort of late-night soapy TV. The film’s opening titles play over and over to simulate television episodes (each with their own cringeworthy titles, like \u201cAsses to Ashes\u201d and \u201cDoppelgangbang\u201d), and I still can\u2019t tell whether it\u2019s the reason I thought it was well-paced. However, the humor eventually gets repetitive before the film simply just ended, rather unceremoniously. At times it reminded me of the TBS sitcom Angie Tribeca<\/em> (a show I love) but less exuberant \u2014 the oneiric quality and multiple overlays were the highlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of the short films really blew me away, although the advantage to IFFR shorts is that they play with form in ways you might never see before. There\u2019s Simon Rieth\u2019s 6000 Mensonges <\/em><\/strong>(6000 lies), composed of 6000 AI-generated prenatal images as the filmmaker\u2019s personal response to losing a newborn. Then there\u2019s Cameron Worden\u2019s Digital Devil Saga<\/em><\/strong>, which I cannot necessarily recommend to the photosensitive. Essentially an audiovisual overload of digital detritus, Worden picks from the most familiar corners of the Internet to those you maybe never wanted to see and edits them together at light-speed (seriously). Valeria Sarmiento\u2019s La Femme Au Foyer (The Housewife)<\/em><\/strong> is a biting short film prelude to Patricio Guzm\u00e1n The Battle of Chile, Part I <\/em><\/strong>\u2014 <\/strong>the first in a grand trilogy on the nation-state\u2019s CIA-backed 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende, an essential historical watch \u2014 whose interrogation of the perceived passivity of the housewife in political affairs is both humorous and frightening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Italian films gave me the impression that its popular national cinema wants to be as pulpy as possible \u2014 but that\u2019s probably not too far from the truth if we look at things like giallo <\/em>filmmaking. Piano 17<\/em><\/strong> (Floor 17<\/em><\/strong>) is a Manetti Bros. film (this year\u2019s edition had a retrospective section devoted to the filmmakers) in the style of Speed<\/em> and Die Hard<\/em> but contingent upon a series of compounding flashbacks. It\u2019s ridiculous, but the writing works for the style and it\u2019s not easy to get bored, even when the main characters are stuck in an elevator for the majority of the film. I barely caught a sold-out screening of Daniele Luchetti\u2019s Trust<\/em><\/strong> (Confidenza<\/em><\/strong>), a psychological thriller centered around a man and his past demons his ex-girlfriend threatens to release as he grows old. We never learn what they are, which is frustrating (but part of the film\u2019s generalizability), and some scenarios border on absurd, but it\u2019s kind of brilliant how much tension the filmmaker is able to build. The number of horny Italian characters (read: everybody cheated on everybody) left me asking: Is this real life or is this just Italy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Toward the end of the festival I found more of my favorites, including Emilia Ga\u0161i\u0107\u2019s 78 Days<\/em><\/strong>, a fictional found footage film (actually shot in Hi8) on the lives of three sisters in rural Serbia during the 1999 NATO bombings. It could so very plausibly be a documentary, all thanks to a genuinely stunning ensemble performance of a trio of two young women and a girl. Partly inspired by the director discovering her own Hi8 tapes of the bombings and life with her two sisters, it\u00a0 acts as sort of brilliantly resistive, anti-war porn \u2014 anti-war, but also the inverse of war porn where mundanity instead takes a front seat in examining conflict. Finally, there\u2019s Fresh Kill<\/em><\/strong>, Shu Lea Cheang\u2019s radical 90s ecofeminist, queer, hacktivist, capitalism-bashing, performance art-focused 90s conspiracy thriller \u2014 one could append so many more labels that would do the film more injustice than good. It felt like Do the Right Thing<\/em>, a film whose communities I am not a part of, for an audience like me. Collage-like in nature, it splices together scenes from different environments that all come together by the end to craft a wild critique of contemporary technofeudalism. The only way to understand Fresh Kill<\/em> is really to experience it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Naturally, I didn\u2019t manage to see any of the feature film award winners. Nonetheless, some of my top films (like 78 Days<\/em><\/strong> and Me, Maryam, the Children and 26 Others<\/em><\/strong>) clocked in at the top 20 of the audience favorites, so maybe I really am just a predictable film viewer. Granted, fellow members of the press whispered of a nearly 30 to 40% budget cut for this year\u2019s edition (the veracity of this statement could not be proven) and likely a less rewarding festival than years past. But on the whole, I was satisfied with the diversity of films and a few favorites that emerged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A look at the offerings of this year’s IFFR, including “DUCK,” “Piano 17,” “78 Days,” and more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":21586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416,340],"tags":[1419,1436],"class_list":["post-21585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews","tag-film-fests","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22362,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21585\/revisions\/22362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/DUCK-1024x576.jpg\")
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