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REVIEW: Fuocoammare [Fire at Sea] [2016]

2017/02/24 Jared Mobarak

“The mountains couldn’t hide us” The story within Fuocoammare [Fire at Sea] is a personal one for director Gianfranco Rosi, himself a refugee from Eritrea during its war for independence at thirteen. He left his parents behind, arriving in Italy on a military plane. So to see statistics about 400,000 men, women, and children leaving Africa and the Middle East for the tiny twenty-square km island of Lampedusa in twenty years isn’t to simply be wowed by the abstract numbers. He understands the struggle, hope, and uncertainty that go into…

REVIEW: Tanna [2016]

2017/02/212017/02/23 Jared Mobarak

“It’s time you learned the meaning of respect” There have been countless renditions of Romeo and Juliet during the past five hundred or so years and yet its themes still haven’t grown stale. Bentley Dean and Martin Butler‘s Tanna isn’t an official retelling considering its tale is based on a real life romance, but it’s nearly impossible not to think about the Shakespearian classic while watching. The events onscreen occurred in 1987 in the midst of civil unrest between two tribes of the Kastom roads. With colonialists and Christians arriving…

BERLINALE17 REVIEW: Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau [Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves] [2017]

2017/02/122017/02/13 Jared Mobarak

“People do not yet see they are miserable. We will show them!” There’s universality to Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie‘s Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau [Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves] even if it is very much a Québécois film. Marking their second collaboration together (after 2011’s Laurentie), the two were desperate to tell a tale about young radicals on the cusp of disillusionment after the failed Maple Spring protests (an infamous series of student demonstrations and…

REVIEW: Rocco e i suoi fratelli [Rocco and His Brothers] [1960]

2017/02/082017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“But you mustn’t always forgive” More than a story about immigrants building a new life for themselves away from the home they wished could have been theirs forever, Luchino Visconti‘s Rocco e i suoi fratelli [Rocco and His Brothers] is an epic journey of hubris, love, and grand dreams falling short. In three hours we receive around four or five years of advancement and corruption within the Parondi family as opportunities are achieved as easily as they are squandered. We’re talking about five brothers who grew up in southern Italy’s…

REVIEW: Ennemis intérieurs [Enemies Within] [2016]

2017/02/082017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“Between you and me, what’s the difference?” The definitive exchange in Hidden Figures—the one that defines America then and still today—is when Kirsten Dunst‘s personnel manager tells Octavia Spencer‘s yet-to-be-given-the-title supervisor, “Despite what you may think, I have nothing against y’all.” Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughan counters without missing a beat, “I know you probably believe that.” It’s such a perfect distillation of how racism permeates the very core of who we are to the point where we don’t even understand why we are racist. It happens all the time now, white…

REVIEW: Silent Nights [2016]

2017/02/072017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“I live a very hard life” It’s extremely difficult for me to blindly accept a film like Aske Bang‘s Silent Nights on faith. The idea that someone can do bad things—no matter how good he/she is at heart—and continuously be rewarded is a tough sell. But that’s exactly what this look at immigration through a charitable Danish lens attempts. A man may be a saint, but that doesn’t excuse thieving, adultery, or lying with ease. I understand the message comes down to “hard living” and “impossible decisions,” but the film’s…

REVIEW: Watani: My Homeland [2016]

2017/02/072017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“I am responsible for destroying my children’s future right now” Out of five Oscar-nominated documentary shorts, four deal with the cost of genocide with three being specifically about today’s Arab refugees. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the topic is very much at the forefront of the world’s mind, the internet allowing injustices thousands of miles away appear as though they’re occurring right next door. What sets Marcel Mettelsiefen‘s Watani: My Homeland apart from the other two, however, is that it focuses on the innocents made to endure civil…

REVIEW: Mindenki [Sing] [2016]

2017/02/062017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“Well life isn’t always fair, my dear” A new candidate for cinema’s best villain of 2016 emerges out of Kristóf Deák‘s Hungarian short Mindenki [Sing]. Her name is Miss Erika (Zsófia Szamosi), the Middle School choir conductor in charge of her school’s nationally recognized troupe of youngsters readying to defend their previous championships. She seems so wonderful and the kids who love her love her, but there’s more to her actions than kind-hearted and pure leadership leaving each student with a chocolate candy upon class end. Beneath this façade adored…

REVIEW: 4.1 Miles [2016]

2017/01/282017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“Did Dad get on the boat?” While Trump’s administration unconstitutionally discriminates against Muslims from countries he doesn’t do business with, heroes are risking their lives to protect those who need protecting. One of these is Kyriakos Papadopoulos, a Greek Coast Guard captain from the island of Lebos who goes out into the choppy waters of the Aegean Sea to rescue refugees braving the four-mile distance from Turkey. He says that they go out every hour to pull in about two hundred innocent survivors of war, the numbers adding up to…

REVIEW: Hooligan Sparrow [2016]

2017/01/252017/01/26 Jared Mobarak

“Hey Principal: get a room with me and leave the kids alone!” First-time director Nanfu Wang‘s documentary Hooligan Sparrow proves how a single piece of paper explaining a child’s rights can cause a ripple within a sea of oppression and catalyze justice. That document came from the hand of Wang Yu, a lawyer who followed and supported the titular “Sparrow” (Ye Haiyan) on a journey to expose the heinous acts of the Chinese government. Yu is now in prison and has been for two years without trial. Haiyan and her…

REVIEW: 悲兮魔兽 [Bei xi mo shou] [Behemoth] [2016]

2017/01/232017/01/26 Jared Mobarak

“A land of deathly silence” There’s just one thing missing from Liang Zhao‘s visually masterful documentary 悲兮魔兽 [Bei xi mo shou] [Behemoth] and it’s a before image of what this wasteland of coal and rock used to be before God’s beast was unleashed. This creature—as represented by the industrial machine—devours the mountains of Mongolia, exploding large formations into rubble to be separated by the Sichaun people acting as minions. These citizens become the cause and effect, each job necessary to aid in their survival proving to also be the root…