My choice of best films I saw in the cinemas and streaming, during 2021.
Opening
title card of Druk : ‘What is youth? A dream. What is love? The content of the
dream.’ Søren Kierkegaard
A loner and cook (played by John Magaro) has travelled west and joined a group of fur trappers in Oregon Territory, though he only finds connection with a Chinese immigrant (played by Orion Lee). The men collaborate on a business, although its longevity is reliant upon the participation of a wealthy landowner's prized milking cow.
“Alissa Wilkinson : A lot of this film is about settlers, mostly white settlers coming into a place that’s already inhabited and trying to impose a hierarchy on it. And there’s a silliness inherent in this hierarchy — something everyone seems to know except them.
Kelly Reichardt : I guess it’s really about who has the guns and the money, as always. But there isn’t even a currency — it’s just trading whatever you need. Somehow the levels of race and class exist from the get-go. There’s the complicated scene, with the First Nations people, and the Chief Factor (who’s played by Toby Jones), who’s sort of like a CEO who would come and exploit the resources. He’s married to a Chinook woman. A Chinese man shows up. There’s a servant there. That was a really tricky scene to balance all that. It’s also just a movie about capitalism versus nature. The beginnings of capitalism, and how quickly the beaver was depleted. If those two things can co-exist.”
Undine,
directed by Christian Petzold, Germany/France, 2020
Undine (Paula Beer) works as a historian lecturing on Berlin's urban development. But when the man she loves leaves her, she then has a passionate affair with a diver ( played Franz Rogowski). But the ancient myth catches up with her. Undine has to kill the man who betrayed her and return to the water.
“ The first six days of production involved a water tank at Berlin’s Babelsberg studio and establishing an aquatic mise-en-scène. “I’m religious when I’m thinking about cinema,” Petzold admits. “The camera must be affected by things the camera sees. I don’t like camera work where the camera is full of vanity. The camera has to be modest. The camera sees two young bodies dancing underwater, and the camera – this machinery – feels jealous, and wants to be part of it.” (…) “A week later, on land, Petzold noticed something strange. “I was thinking: what is happening to the actors? They’re moving through their apartment, through the city as if they’re underwater. They don’t talk so much. They make circles with their bodies around each other, like a dance scene, like a Max Ophül’s movie. This, I liked so much. For me, Berlin’s also underwater.”
Dazed, April 22, 2021.
Petite
Maman, directed by Céline Sciamma, France 2021.
Nelly has just lost her grandmother and is helping her parents clean out her mother's childhood home. Nelly’s mother disappears for no reason. So Nelly starts exploring explores the house and the surrounding woods. One day she meets a girl her same age, who has built a treehouse.
“The trouble with drama, says Sciamma, is that it’s invariably built around ideas of conflict. It’s about rivals and enemies; resolution through violence. Whereas she wanted to do something different: to construct a tense, high-stakes drama in which the players are open and broadly on the same page. She says: “If you start a scene where the characters are negotiating and agreeing, I’m suddenly full of attention. Now what’s going to happen? The possibilities are limitless. This scene could go anywhere.” (…) “Specifically where Petite Maman goes is deep into the relationship between an unreliable mother and her bruised, anxious child. Its magic-realist conceit serves to erase the years and place its two protagonists eye-to-eye. The tragedy of families, Sciamma explains, is that we are only in sync with our parents when we reach the age that they were – and by that point of course they have already moved on. “We only meet our mothers politically when we grow up. We understand the decisions they made and the specific pressures they were under. The political system. The reproductive system. At some point we read the world the same as they did. But through fiction, through time-travel, we can do it from a place of equality.”
The Guardian, November 2021, 2021.
Druk, directed by Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark/Sweden/The
Netherlands, 2020
Inspired by Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s suggestion that the human body has an inbuilt alcohol deficiency, Martin, played by Mads Mikkelsen, and three close friends, all teachers, embark on a reckless experiment: to see if daytime drinking can help them become better versions of themselves – to learn to live again.
“David Fear : You’ve been quoted as saying that that is really what the film is about — not so much drinking to excess as embracing the uncontrollable. And clearly, you don’t need alcohol for that. But having made this film, do you feel like you have more insight into that idea? Is it easier for you to let go of control now?
Thomas Vinterberg: Well … that’s a huge thing. It’s something that philosophers have struggled with; Kierkegaard wrote whole books about allowing yourself to lose control over your life, allowing yourself to fail. And it’s a very difficult thing for people to accept. In my life, I have to figure out what movies to make, what ideas to pursue or not to pursue. And sometimes I get ideas that are crazy, and people around me would say, “Thomas … you can’t do that.” And then by doing that anyway, there’s a purposeful loss of control — which is very joyful and very inspirational [laughs]. I mean, take the dance at the end of the movie. It’s the kind of scene where people are suddenly going, “Wait, now it’s a musical. This high school teacher can dance?” It was slipping into something that put us at risk of being on thin ice with the audience. But we all said, “Let’s do this.” It was our version of losing control — and without using alcohol!”
Rolling Stone, April 15, 2021
Titane,
directed by Julie Ducournau, France/Belgium, 2021.
Spanning body horror, a love story and comedy, the exhilaratingly disconcerting work stars Vincent Lindon as a steroid-injecting macho fire captain with a vulnerable side, opposite newcomer Agathe Rousselle as an on-the-run serial killer and car-show erotic dancer masquerading as his long-lost son.
“The choice of the fire station and fireman’s barrack and the exaggerated, macho world of firefighters as the main backdrop and milieu of Titane served a double purpose. “I wanted to subvert the archetypes we have in our heads about what masculinity should be. And then, what femininity should be on the other side, with the dancers at the car show. These professions gather a lot of social clichés, social archetypes and constructs that I’ve tried to deconstruct in my film,” she says. “Secondly, I wanted to do something between metal and fire.” The latter ambition in turn grew out of Ducournau’s starting point for the film, which is the half-metal, half-human baby in its final scene. “I had the idea of the ending very early on. It was just a scene, nothing else, but I knew I wanted this impression, this emotion. I started asking myself, ‘Where does this baby come from? How did she get pregnant?’ If the baby is half-metal, then it cannot be something quite human in terms of intercourse — and I went with the car,” she explains. “The car represents an extension of masculinity in our society. I wanted to subvert that, to reverse that for her to actually take over the car in order to please herself. So, this was like a subversion of this kind of cliché about cars.” Ducournau intertwined this with Greek mythology and the story of Gaia, goddess of Earth, who conceived the Titans with her son Uranus, for the title. “In French, ‘titan’ means both titanium and titan and the title feminises the word with the ‘e’ at the end,” she explains.”
Screen Daily, December 7, 2021
Benedetta,
directed by Paul Verhoeven, France/Belgium/The Netherlands, 2021
17th-century Tuscany, Italy. As the sinister threat of the Plague looms over Europe, the sincerely devout eight-year-old novice, Benedetta Carlini, is brought into the Theatine Convent of the Mother of God in Pescia. Eighteen long years later, a test of faith awaits deeply pious Benedetta in the shape of bruised, abused, and earthly Bartolomea: a young woman fleeing her violent father. Benedetta's miracles and inexplicable acts elevate her standing at the expense of others, she becomes the abbess.
“Elisabeth Vincentelli : Benedetta has stigmata, but it’s unclear whether she is a visionary or a fraud, or both.
Paul Verhoeven : I felt that I should not decide for the audience. In “Total Recall,” there are two narratives and they’re both believable: One is that he is basically in a dream and he will be lobotomized at the end of the movie; in the other one, he is the saviour of Mars. You can also compare it a little bit with “Basic Instinct” [1992]: At the end of the movie, it’s not completely clear if Sharon Stone really did it or if it was Jeanne Tripplehorn. There was something interesting for me to accept multiple realities.” (…)
Elisabeth Vincentelli : Benedetta is both pious and shrewd.
The New York Times, December 3, 2021.
Spencer, directed
by Pablo Larrain, United Kingdom / Germany
/ United States /Chile, 2021
During her
Christmas holidays with the royal family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk,
England, Diana Spencer, struggling with mental health problems, decides to end
her decade-long marriage to Prince Charles.
“Much of your work revolves around characters in crisis: the central couple in Ema, the protagonists in No, Jackie, Lisey’s Story. In Spencer, Diana is at Sandringham House, where the royal family spends its holidays, grappling with her disintegrating relationship with Charles. Why do you think you gravitate to that?
Isn’t it
the key of cinema to have an actor or a character in a crisis? All the dramatic
theory orbits around that somehow. There are movies like Jackie or Spencer
where you don’t know what the character wants up until the point of the movie.
Some characters don’t know what they want, but a situation makes them
understand they are in a crisis. And as the movie evolves, they need to really
understand it. So it’s a more existentialist type of cinema. It’s really about
the structure, but there’s always something that has to make the character
explode. “ (…)
“Are you
conscious of the fact that, after Jackie, Neruda, and Spencer, people see you
as someone who is deconstructing the biopic genre?
I’ve never
done it consciously. First, I don’t have a plan of doing this or that type of
movie. I’m not trying to build my career so people can create any kind of logic
or analyze it in any specific way. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever done a biopic.
I think Neruda and Jackie and Spencer are movies about people in certain
circumstances where everything is about to explode. They’re not really biographical
analyzations; it’s not the study of a life of someone. I think some people
could misunderstand it. Before they go to see a movie like Spencer, they might
say, We’re going to really understand who this person was. No! Wrong number!
Wrong movie! We don’t do that! We’re just trying to work with whatever that
person was and create a fable out of it. That’s what I’m looking for. We’ll see
if it works.”
Vulture , November 11, 2021.
Beginning, original title Dasatskisi , directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia / France, 2020.
When extremists burn down the church of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Yana, the wife of church congregation leader David, has had enough. She wants to leave the Georgian countryside where she and her fellow believers have just begun to build a new community. But David dismisses her fears as irrational hypersensitivity and leaves to meet with the church elders to arrange for money to rebuild the church. In his absence, Yana is visited by a police officer who asks some very intimate questions and makes it clear to her that, as a woman, she can play no role other than sufferer.
“Did you have in mind how the camera would take on the perspective of the characters from the start? I just loved how much exists outside the frame and is left to your own imagination.
Yes, the moment I started to work on this version of the script, I knew how I would want to shoot it. But before that, we did really huge research with a cinematographer about all the lenses that I was considering. I love to research all the technical possibilities and all the lenses — I have entire catalogs of all the lens possibilities — but then I thought that no, it’s one lens, one camera, and every time camera has the fixed position, each room, each location, camera is always in one place because I wanted to grasp domestic life somehow, like how do people live in their house? It’s a familiar point of view, to always look at one room from one point of view, because I was thinking all of my childhood memories are memories about the spaces and they’re always from one specific point of view.
Then I tried to distill everything to that point. I do believe that where you place the camera is the most important decision on making a film, and once I knew how the actors move and inhabit the characters and the space and how they made the space their own, I [thought], “Okay, this is where I place the camera if I wanted to grasp something, which is intangible, something which is happening without me really intervening.” We had such few camera positions that actually [the assistant camerapeople] were making fun of me, saying that, “Okay, we could perhaps shoot this film in two weeks.”
The Moveable Fest, January 27, 2021.
Nomadland,
directed by Chloé Zhao, United States, 2020.
Following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern (Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad.
“DEADLINE: That sense of a disappearing way of life has run through your work. You balance a real melancholic truth, though, with a certain sense of romance for the worlds you capture. It strikes me that you feel simpatico with the kind of resolve it takes for people to persevere with their way of life while the odds get stacked against them. Is that a fair assessment?
ZHAO: I think so. I think it comes instinctually to all of us who want to tell stories for a living. I think there’s a gut feeling towards the kind of stories that draw us. I’ll pass through a small town in Nebraska that has a population of 18 people, which used to be a popular railroad town until the railroad stopped, and all I want to do is try to figure out from those people how they would want to be remembered, if their town were to disappear entirely. That impulse still drives me.
As storytellers, we’re in the business, anyway, of recording things; of recording time and recording people. And, for me, I’m interested in those things that are about to go away, like the town of Empire. Maybe that’s where the romanticism comes in, because I don’t go in thinking I want to examine an issue or make a statement; I’m always trying to look through the perspective of someone who loves a place like this, and this way of life. It was the same with Brady with the horses and being a cowboy in The Rider."
Deadline, February 8, 2021.
The World
to Come, directed by Mona Fastvold,
United States, 2020.
n upstate New York in the 1850s, Abigail begins a new year on the rural farm where she lives with her husband Dyer. As Abigail considers the year to come through her journal entries, we experience the marked contrast between her deliberate, stoic manner and her unraveling complex emotions. Spring arrives and Abigail meets Tallie, an emotionally frank and arrestingly beautiful newcomer renting a neighboring farm with her husband, Finney. The two strike up a tentative relationship, filling a void in their lives which neither knew existed.
“Hammer to Nail: And it’s also interesting for me to think about I used to read the novels of Willa Cather and think about, that kind of thing. Oh pioneers, right? They’re not that far out, they’re still in New York, there’s a sense in the film that like, they might as well be in North Dakota as cutoff as they feel from. And especially as how cutoff she is from any sort of power when the sheriff won’t believe her and the husbands are poisoning their wives and things like that. I mean, it’s absolute powerlessness.
Mona Fastvold: Yeah, what’s interesting I thought about when I was reading more and more and kind of researching this particular time period in this area is that there was a lull in religion during this time period. People had been very, in living in very tight knit religious communities. And then all of a sudden there [were] these people farming, bigger areas of land and spreading out more. And all of a sudden, whatever customs and religion that they brought with them from Europe or wherever they were immigrating from, this was becoming less important. And they were living much more isolated. And even Abigail, she stopped going to church. And she’s not part of a community in the same way that the past generations were. So there is this incredible isolation that she finds herself in, from having with her grief as well, but also just from having from this lack of interest in being part of the community around her. Which I think allowed for the romance between her and Tallie to blossom in a different way, because there’s not a lot of eyes on them. So this idea that when the two of them find each other, that it is incredible moment of just like the great thing that I have been waiting for my whole life. Is this a miracle versus cycle? Why do I have these feelings for someone of the same sex? And I should feel guilty and mad about that? It’s more just about this. Like I have never heard about this.”
Hammer To Nail, February 22, 2021.
The Power of the Dog, directed by Jane
Campion, United Kingdom / Canada / Australia / New Zealand / United States,
2021.
In 1925 Montana, wealthy ranch-owning brothers Phil and George Burbank meet widow and inn owner Rose Gordon during a cattle drive. The kind-hearted George is quickly taken with Rose, while the volatile Phil, much influenced by his late mentor "Bronco" Henry, mocks Rose's son Peter for his lisp and effeminate manner. Phil immediately starts tormenting both mother and son. Rose numbs herself with alcohol. Peter is awkward but fiercely protective of his mother, and he focuses his watchful intelligence on somehow bringing Phil to justice.
“Was she at all intimidated by the uber-masculine world in which the story is set? “Oh, God, yes, right from the beginning!” she says, throwing back her head and laughing. “But I also knew from the moment I decided to do it that it was going to be a departure for me. That’s really what was so exciting about it. Plus, I don’t actually make conscious choices about what I’m going to do. It’s more that an energy comes up in me when I get inspired by something. I didn’t try to figure it out, I just go with the feeling.”
She pauses for a moment, deep in thought. “And, you know, the #MeToo movement probably had some bearing on my decision. It was such a powerful force that I think it opened up a whole different space to explore this kind of subject matter. It was like those women, young women mostly, had peeled away so many layers of the onion as regards masculinity, that it created a space for old warriors like myself to explore a very male story like this one.”
Has she actually noticed a cultural shift in the film business post-#MeToo? “Well, I think Hollywood is running really scared. Hollywood was the heart of it and I think it’s petrified because it does matter and it does count. It’s not fashionable to be misogynistic. It’s not going under the radar any more. It is the radar.”
The Guardian, November 7, 2021.
True
Mothers, original title Asa ga kuru, directed by Naomi Kawase, Japan / France, 2020.
A sensitive
portrayal of motherhood tells the story
of two mothers who take very different paths in life, and have totally
different experiences of motherhood. For one woman motherhood comes as a
long-awaited blessing, but for the other it completely upends her life and
turns her into an outcast.
"I
tried to feature a relationship that does not rely on blood ties. This is what
I've dealt with in many of my previous works," the director said in an
online press conference during the 25th Busan International Film Festival
(BIFF) that kicked off Wednesday for a 10-day run in the southern port city of
Busan.
"This time, I focused on people who can become a family without biological relationship," she said.
"There is the national adoption system in Japan but few people are aware of it," she said. "People strongly want a son to extend the family tree and it is hard for a sterile person to get married."
The 51-year old director, who is also well known as a documentary filmmaker, used both fictional and non-fictional methods to depict the story in an effort to ease viewers' possibly negative feelings about adoption and teenage pregnancy.
"As it has its original story, I made efforts not to lose the fictional storyline," Kawase said. "But at the same time, I thought I can cross the line between fiction and documentary. It's like I can bring the audience to the fictional world from reality."
Yon Hap News,
October 22, 2021.
Un Monde,
directed by Laura Wandel, Belgium 2021.
Nora wants nothing more than to make friends at her new elementary school; however, in the schoolyard she sees that her big brother Abel is being harassed. When she wants to help him, things go from bad to worse. While her father wants her to speak, her brother wants her to remain silent, leaving Nora with a tearing choice.
“How did the writing process go for Un Monde?
For me, writing has always been laborious. It takes much time; you have to accept that things don't come easily. You have to rewrite, let it rest, start again, see that it doesn't work, come back to the beginning again and again. It took me five years to write this script! It's a difficult path but at the same time very interesting! It's like being a gold seeker. You dig for a long time to finally find the gem or at least something that at some point reveals itself despite yourself.
Editing is the same thing. It is also a writing process, but there is a moment when the material reveals itself. Then, as if the film had its own logic, we have to catch that thing. And there is a moment when it happens. Always. I'm sure about it. But you have to accept that it takes much time, work, disappointment... That's how you get to the end of things. “
Moonday July 7, 2021.
Possessor,
directed by Brandon Cronenberg, Canada/United
Kingdom/ United States/Australia, 2020
An agent,
played by Andrea Riseborough, works for
a secretive organization that uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other
people's bodies - ultimately driving them to commit assassinations for
high-paying clients.
“7R: When you’re putting together a film like this, how concrete is your vision before filming begins? What’s your pre-production process like?
Brandon
Cronenberg: I try and find a balance between getting everything nailed down,
and then sort of being open to collaborate and explore it with other people.
I’ll have the film in my head in a very specific way, and try and have all the
answers.
But at the
same time, I work with, fortunately, some really great people, even during
development — people like Karim Hussain, our cinematographer, and Dan Martin,
our effects artist. I’ll spend a lot of time with them experimenting. Karim
lived down the street from me for years during development. I would just go
over to his place, and we would play with projection feedback and the different
lenses and gels and figure out different ways that we can deform the image for
those hallucination scenes.
(…)
“7R:
Violence and body horror play major roles in this film. How did you get from a
tamer feature, like Antiviral, to a movie like Possessor?
Brandon
Cronenberg: So much of the film is about Vos, and so much of Vos’s character is
rooted in her relationship to violence. The audience needs that visceral
reaction to understand what she’s going through. But the depiction of the
violence also tracks with her psychology. Sometimes, it’s much more observational
and fast and brutal, and then sometimes, as it’s settling in, she looks back at
it, and it has this kind of ultra-stylized, almost sensual quality to it. It’s
so much at the core of her character, and because her character is the driving
force of the narrative, it had to be explicit, but also stylized in different
ways as the film progresses. “
Das Mädchen und
die Spinne, directed by Ramon Zürcher, Silvan
Zürcher, Switzerland, 2021.
Clear and
lighthearted investigation into turbulent feelings when familiar relationships
are suddenly called into question. As happens to the young woman Mara when
Lisa, with whom she has been living for a long time, unexpectedly moves into an
apartment of her own.
“Why did you decide to make the jobs and deeper backgrounds of the
characters so ambiguous? It seems like Mara has an artistic skill of some kind.
On the other hand, the ambiguity and obliquity that the film
is trying to engender is intriguing.
Cineuropa, March 3,
2021.
All the
Pretty Little Horses, original title Mikrá ómorfa áloga, directed by Michalis
Konstantatos, Greece / Belgium / Germany, 2020.
The thirty-somethings Petros, Aliki and their son Panagiotis, live in and around their luxurious house. He is mainly doing odd jobs, she is interested in looking at houses with a real estate agent. But they do have that beautiful house, don't they? So what exactly is the situation?
“What inspired you to make this film?
The various socio-political changes that have been taking place around me have always been a source of inspiration for my film. The economic crisis in Greece brought foundational shifts in social structures and interpersonal relationships. Many people have fallen into depression in these past few years. Families have fallen apart, people have lost faith in each other and themselves.
At the same time, the widening gap of wealth inequality has made things even worse. The prevailing idea in the public consciousness is now that “simply getting by is a luxury.” The labour rights have been diminished and, in many cases, directly targeted and stigmatised.
The idea that a small group of ultra-rich become even richer during an economic crisis has not only been legitimised, it has become a foregone conclusion. All of these thoughts, reality itself, and the crisis of values that I see day after day, resulted in the creation of this film. “
Screen Daily, August 20, 2020.
The Father,
directed by Florian Zeller, United
Kingdom / France, 2020.
A man, played by Anthony Hopkins, refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages. As he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.
“I understand you changed the character’s name from the play (on which the film is based) to Anthony in the hopes that Anthony Hopkins would portray the character. How was the process in actually securing him for the role?
It is true that when I started to dream about the film I had Anthony in mind. It was an obsession, a conviction…the reason why I wanted to make the film in English and not French. To me, he’s the greatest living actor. I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy dream to fulfil being my first feature as director, but until someone tells me it isn’t possible I act as if it is. I decided to follow my instinct, and the reason I wanted him so badly to be in this was because we are so used to him playing a character so intelligent, so powerful, and what it would be like for him to be someone losing control, cause The Father is about someone losing their bearings. I wanted the audience to experience this painful process (too) of losing someone so familiar.
The other reason I came to him was because I wanted to bring something he wasn’t known for. I wanted to challenge him to explore a new emotional territory. For him to go to this vulnerable and fragile place, I think it’s really courageous of him. You know, he’s 83 years old and he could’ve done what he already knows, but he’s still an artist and he’s putting himself at risk, forced to look at his mortality.
The film really toys with the emotions of its audience. There’s almost a thriller/gas-lighting mentality to the way that certain characters are introduced. How did you find balancing the film’s tone?
My first idea was to put the audience in a unique position, to question everything that they are witnessing. I wanted The Father to not only be a story but also an experience, an experience of losing your own bearings. As a viewer it’s as if you are in the main character’s head and you’re not entirely sure what’s going on. There’s so many contradictions in the narrative, and you have to find the right path to find the meaning. This was so important to me because I didn’t want the audience to just watch a story they’ve already been told. “
The AU Review, March 31, 2021.
The Killing of Two Lovers, directed by Robert Machoian, United States, 2020.
David desperately tries to keep his family of six together during a separation from his wife Niki. They both agree to see other people but David struggles to grapple with his wife's new relationship.
“ The film makes masterful use of long takes throughout, and Machoian and cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jiménez employ it much differently than De Palma did for his Nicolas Cage conspiracy thriller. In one key moment, the camera acts as an equalizer during an emotionally fraught scene.
Avoiding traditional shot-reverse-shot coverage, the camera is instead framed on both David and Nikki as they work through an argument. This prevents the audience from choosing a side.
“The second you hold the camera, you establish that somebody is more important than the other,” Machoian explains. “But David and Nikki are equally trying to figure this out. And there really isn’t one who is in more of a position of power than the other.”
Crawford, Moafi, and Coy all have theater experience, which made pulling off these extended sequences possible. “If we didn’t have the actors that we had, we would have had to shoot it differently. Because if you do a long take with someone who can’t act, it just gets worse the longer they go with it — it doesn’t necessarily get better,” Machoian says.
Machoian is aware that long takes can be distracting to viewers. “It felt really important to just orchestrate the performance, and allow Sepideh and Clayne to move within that frame, and as a result, hopefully not draw attention to the fact that we’ve been sitting on this shot for four minutes,” he said. “Hopefully in the end you’re so engrossed in the character drama, that it’s really kind of an afterthought.”
MovieMaker, May 22, 2021.
Passing, directed
by Rebecca Hall, United States/United Kingdom/Canada, 2021.
Set in the
twenties, the unexpected reunion of two high school friends, whose renewed
acquaintance ignites a mutual obsession that threatens both of their carefully
constructed realities. One of the women is an active member of Harlem's Black
community. The other is married to a white man and is passing as white.
“On her
understanding of her mother's racial identity
To me, she
always looked Black. Certainly growing up in the English countryside and going
to a very white private schools, I was aware of her difference. But it was a
thorny subject matter, not because she wouldn't give me answers. She couldn't.
She didn't really have access to the information, either. So I would ask her, I
would say, "What are we? What's our heritage? Tell me about your
father?" And she would say, "I don't really know. It's possible that
he was a bit Black or a bit Native American. I don't really know."
NPR,
November 30, 3021.
Sweat,
directed by Magnus von Horn, Poland/Sweden,
2020.
Three days in the life of fitness motivator Sylwia Zajac, a social media celebrity surrounded by loyal employees and admirers, who is really looking for true intimacy.
“I was trying to come up with all these noble film ideas but I was spending more time on my phone. That was the first time I started following a fitness motivator on Snapchat, and I couldn’t stop. She was posting maybe 70 clips per day. And it created such a strange narrative, because it was so many silly, banal things mixed with sometimes very serious things. (…)
“There was some jealousy in me about that ability to share your life in such a spontaneous way – not thinking about strategy, just sharing her life as roughly and dirty as possible. I called her a narcissist in the beginning, but then I think it might be more narcissistic to not be able to post like that, because you’re thinking so much: ‘How will I be presented if I do this post?’ So it was very much about my reactions to watching her: since we’re so different, where do we meet?”
The Guardian, June 24, 2021.
Other
notable films. alphabetical: Cry Macho, directed by Clint Eastwood, United States,2021
; Dear
Comrades, by Andrey Konchalovskiy,
Russia, 2020 ; Mitra,
directed by Kaweh Modiri, Netherlands
/ Germany/ Denmark, 2021 ; Nr. 10, directed by Alex van Warmerdam, Netherlands/Belgium,
2021 ; Pieces of a Woman, directed by Kornél Mundruczó, Canada/Hungary/United
States, 2020 ; Rose Plays Julie, directed by Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy,
Ireland/ United Kingdom, 2019 ; De Veroordeling, directed by Sander Burger,
Netherlands, 2021;
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