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TIFF17 REVIEW: L’insulte [The Insult] [2017]

2017/09/072017/09/13 Jared Mobarak

“Because that’s what they are. Just stupid words.” Despite the fact that Ziad Doueiri‘s (a crew member on some of Quentin Tarantino‘s early works) latest film L’insulte [The Insult] is set in Lebanon, the ensuing drama can’t help but feel familiar to what’s currently happening in America. As our president says bad things are happening on “both sides” and that there are “good people” being “wrongly maligned,” we know the truth. Or at least we should. Whether or not his words are objectively correct, they fail to acknowledge that those…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Svanurinn [The Swan] [2017]

2017/09/052018/07/10 Jared Mobarak

“You were so good when you were little” What once was a traditional rite of passage for Icelandic children has now become punishment. Whereas her mother probably visited her Aunt Ólöf’s (Katla M. Þorgeirsdóttir) farmland to learn responsibility and work ethic away from the allure of her ocean-side city, young Sól (Gríma Valsdóttir) makes the trek as penance for shoplifting—itself a byproduct more or less attributed to her life’s upheaval upon her parents’ separation. Gone are her friends (although she states she has few), her sisters, her mother (besides the…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Menoana e Mehlano ea Marseilles [Five Fingers for Marseilles] [2017]

2017/09/042018/07/22 Jared Mobarak

“The land is all the scripture we need” Director Michael Matthews and writer Sean Drummond were drawn to the landscapes of South Africa’s Eastern Cape while traveling their homeland, especially the echoes of classic cinematic western environments. Learning about how its current towns arose—from the ashes of Apartheid-era cities mimicking European capitals by name—only cemented the comparison, each a product of the locals taking control once their oppressors left after their government changed hands and the train lines shutdown. This new frontier became the pair’s setting, their story gelling after…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Gutland [2018]

2017/09/042018/02/21 Jared Mobarak

“Well, it’s not impossible to learn” When a German drifter walks into the quaint Luxembourg village of Schandelsmillen with a scruffy beard, bag full of money, and stoically gruff attitude, we wonder what secrets his past holds. Jens Fauser (Frederick Lau) arrives with a single question: “Do you need help with the harvest?” That specific query unfortunately can’t help but make him stick out like a sore thumb further than he already does considering the harvest is half over. The townspeople therefore prove cold and cryptic, forcing him to accept…

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…

REVIEW: De sidste mænd i Aleppo [Last Men in Aleppo] [2017]

2017/08/302017/09/01 Jared Mobarak

“If I leave, it will be to the cemetery” It’s a shame that those who need to watch Last Men in Aleppo are those who won’t. I’m talking the brainwashed masses quick to call a liberal media “fake news” while they help facilitate legitimate fake news fabricated by enemy regimes hoping to plant dissent. They include watchers of Fox News and listeners of Alex Jones amongst others—an American conservative media outlet and a shock jock peddling fear and bile to an easily manipulated audience. These “news” sources latch onto stories…

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: 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: 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…