Cannes 2023 — Film #11
Next time is next time. Now is now.
Shot in 4:3, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days is filled with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia — helped by a wonderful selection of songs from the 70s and 80s — but at the same time, it’s a tender meditation on living life in the moment. Hirayama, a middle-aged man working as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, teaches us how to find beauty in rustling leaves, reflections on ceilings,…
The more Bergman films I watch, the more I’m falling in love with his style, his dialogues, his themes, and, in the end, I find myself falling in love with film all over again. Bergman’s work is difficult to digest, but at the same time, or maybe just because it is hard to process, it’s nearly impossible to forget about his films, almost as if not only pivotal scenes, but also seemingly insignificant dialogues were forever engraved in my mind. …
Zurich Film Festival 2023
A very personal and deeply touching diary documenting the transition of Jordan, a trans man and Australian director, juxtaposed — or rather, intertwined — with Afghanistan’s political transition to the Taliban regime. The documentary asks difficult questions about gender and religion, humanness and the Taliban, but always without forcing an answer; instead, it takes us with it on a search for those answers.
Zurich Film Festival 2023
My first film from Saudi Arabia — a storyline that plays out during nighttime, beautifully shot and a stellar performance by the lead actor. At times, sadly, the film seems like it doesn’t know what it’s trying to say, but the night shots of Riyadh alone made this worth watching.
About halfway through the film, there is a shot of two characters sitting in the corner of the room. All we see, however, are their reflections in a small mirror placed on a cabinet on one side of the frame, allowing the room and its furniture to take up most of the screen. As one character gets up and leaves, we catch his fleeting reflection before he disappears — in a different mirror, but in the same frame.
Columbus is…
When I got my ticket for Mass, I didn’t expect it to be lighthearted or joyful, but I also wasn’t expecting it to move me as much as it did: I sobbed, I wept, I probably used way too many tissues, and yet, in the end, I smiled. Mass confronts us with perhaps the greatest pain a parent can experience—the loss of a child. This film explores the meeting of two sets of parents; the parents whose son passed away, and the other…
