Film Features | www.jaredmobarak.com

TIFF17 REVIEW: Skyggenes Dal [Valley of Shadows] [2017]

2017/09/012017/09/18 Jared Mobarak

“What we don’t understand scares us” Six year-old Aslak (Adam Ekeli) lives a quiet life with his single mother Astrid (Kathrine Fagerland) in a rural town adjacent to farmland and a mountaintop forest. He’s too young to understand all that’s happening around him—especially considering he’s generally told to keep away from the adults when they’re speaking—but he knows enough to gauge the strained atmosphere and heavy emotion growing. So he looks through keyholes and gazes out windows, everything he sees simultaneously meaningful and yet without meaning. When things get too…

TIFF17 REVIEW: The Crescent [2018]

2017/08/282017/12/08 Jared Mobarak

“Yeah, sweetie. Daddy got lost.” It starts by enveloping us in marbleizing paint—overlapping colors raked to warp dots into abstract patterns—and the loud aural pulses of a musical soundscape as heavy and permanent as those oils are fluidly malleable. We assume it’s merely a sensory aesthetic Seth A. Smith constructs to provide the tone for the subtle horrors still on the horizon, but don’t be surprised if you begin to interpret each new artwork as a self-portrait of characters we’ve yet to meet. Treat them as mood rings simultaneously displaying…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Du forsvinder [You Disappear] [2017]

2017/08/272017/09/13 Jared Mobarak

“We just want to make sure you’re well enough” What if it was an established fact that free will as a concept was dictated by our body’s chemistry? Every decision we think we’re making is really made implicitly by our organs—more correctly, they are dictating to our brains what it is we want. That shopping spree for things you don’t need? That affair with someone you don’t even like? You can’t control either impulse if you truly wanted to because your hormones and biological imperatives in those specific moments have…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Los Burritos [Cocaine Prison] [2017]

2017/08/262017/09/13 Jared Mobarak

“If it doesn’t happen, what can I do?” If you’ve ever watched season three of “Prison Break” and wondered what was going on with Sona’s weird open air slum-like community barely watched by guards, know that the truth isn’t very far off. Just look at Bolivia’s San Sebastian Prison in Cochabamba, a small concrete establishment that ballooned from 180 inmates to over 700 in less than five years. You have to purchase a cell for $2,100 American dollars of your own money if you don’t want to sleep in the…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Cardinals [2017]

2017/08/252018/06/12 Jared Mobarak

“Good to have me back” The big story surrounding Grayson Moore and Aidan Shipley‘s feature debut Cardinals playing the Toronto International Film Festival stems from the fact that both men graduated from the city’s own Ryerson University. As a longtime festival venue/partner, this premiere will inevitably be treated as a homecoming. But don’t let that fool you into screaming “Favoritism!” while dismissing it as a “homer” pick: it’s the real deal. Stripping away the college they graduated from, the knowledge that both are TIFF alumni after screening their short Boxing,…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Black Kite [2017]

2017/08/232018/07/22 Jared Mobarak

“For a drop of water I’ll tell you my whole story” With the world caught in a time and place allowing it to quickly judge so much on so little, tiny human stories like Black Kite prove to be their most potent. Ask Americans about the Taliban and some will probably say the term is synonymous with ISIS, their lazy round-up of terrorist labels from the Middle East ultimately falling under the unfortunate umbrella of Islam at-large. It’s a real shame because this means that too many of us don’t…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Verdwijnen [Disappearance] [2017]

2017/08/212017/09/14 Jared Mobarak

“Until we all drown in it” Vignettes depicting a young girl playing the piano on a darkened concert stage come and go throughout Boudewijn Koole‘s Verdwijnen [Disappearance]. They provide bookends to the whole, his film seemingly a visual representation of the melody—both as this single chapter in Roos’ (Rifka Lodeizen) life and its entire duration from birth to death. It’s only during the end credits that we’re finally told who this girl is: Young Louise (Eva Garet). The mystery lay in the fact that Roos played piano as a child…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Porcupine Lake [2017]

2017/08/202017/09/13 Jared Mobarak

“Never ever squeal. That’s a rule.” Teenage Bea (Charlotte Salisbury) is in desperate need of an escape from her mundane, isolated life. We can assume Toronto’s big city living isn’t yet something she’s embraced due to her tendency for fainting spells whenever anxiety grows. Mom (Delphine Roussel‘s Ally) therefore keeps a tight leash, protecting her daughter as best she can while unfortunately assuring the isolation permeates her very soul. Dad (Christopher Bolton) hopes a change of scenery will do both some good, the Northern Ontario diner he inherited a few…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Hva vil folk si [What Will People Say] [2017]

2017/08/162017/09/18 Jared Mobarak

“You haven’t done anything wrong” The Toronto International Film Festival synopsis calls Iram Haq‘s latest film Hva vil folk si [What Will People Say] an “empathetic story of family, community, and culture.” I would call it straight up social horror made scarier when you discover that it was partly inspired by the artist’s own life. That festival description had me anticipating a road to catharsis wherein a culture clash between strictly conservative Pakistani Muslim values and a more liberal European lifestyle would force young Nisha (Maria Mozhdah) and her parents…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Beyond Words [2017]

2017/08/132017/09/11 Jared Mobarak

“A change of perspective from high to low normally brings new discoveries” An African man—a hopeful immigrant—says something very interesting to his prospective lawyer Michael (Jakub Gierszal) at the start of Urszula Antoniak‘s Beyond Words. When asked if he has a better excuse for finding refuge in Germany than the simple desire to choose his own home as a free human being, he says, “No.” He states that he doesn’t need one. It’s an argument that’s been raging here in America since the 2016 presidential campaign began, this idea that…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Most Beautiful Island [2017]

2017/08/052017/10/30 Jared Mobarak

“I’m so tired of the possibilities” It’s easy for Americans to look at a film like Eli Roth‘s Hostel and find themselves afraid of the situation presented as one they could fall prey to if the circumstances arose. We’ve been instilled with that anxiety for decades—the notion that our freedoms at home do not transfer over when traveling abroad. It’s up to you to learn your destination’s customs and to be vigilant about your safety so as not to be the next Michael P. Fay (caned during a 1994 trip…