By: Henry J. Fromage –
I really packed it in on the final day of Sundance, but I feel like I got to see every film I really wanted to that was available online.
47. Sugarcane
This thoroughly depressing documentary examines the legacy of Canada’s Residency Schools, where Indian children were taken away from their parents and “civilized”, which means forced to speak English, punished in draconian ways for exercising their liberty, and, if you were a girl, too regularly much worse. The inhabitants of the Sugarcane Reserve in British Columbia recount (or in some cases more telling refuse to recount) their memories of this oppressive upbringing, which to this day they can’t get more than a token apology from the Catholic Church or the Canadian government. A reckoning still very much in progress. Two Beers.
48. Nocturnes
This documentary asks us to consider the moths, as it follows a research team on the Indian/Bhutanese border as they build backlight screens to photograph moths at different elevations to see what effect temperature has on their size – and what that may mean for their future considering Climate Change. These creatures are truly ancient, surviving for millennia while extinction events have claimed so many species. This is a documentary with a very specific subject matter, but its concern for nature and what the future holds for it and us is universal. Three Beers.
49. Porcelain War
The big documentary winner from the festival (and instant favorite for next year’s Oscars) is this film about a group of Ukrainian artists who now find themselves fighting on the frontlines of the Russian invasion. For me the odd mix of artistic declaration and propagandistic training and war footage (even if the propaganda is thoroughly on the right side of history) didn’t entirely cohere, but this is still an important work. An extra shout-out to the lyrical animations of paintings on the various ceramic animals they produce, which add a magical realist touch. Three Beers.
50. In the Land of Brothers
This drama is about a group of Afghan refugees in Iran, namely three characters in three different time periods whose stories intersect and inform each other’s. Afghans are treated as an underclass there, rounded up off the street to provide free labor to the police, or make impossible choices to avoid the possibility of being deported. This feels like the type of social issues drama that Asghar Farhadi makes, and it’s no wonder writer/directors Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi won the World Cinema directing award for their efforts here. Two Beers.
51. Tendaberry
Director Haley Elizabeth Anderson and impressive newcomer Kota Johan, who she found busking on the subway, are drawing great notices for this freewheeling, next-to-documentary portrait of a young Coney Island woman navigating life through the last year or so (which factors in greatly when her Ukrainian boyfriend is forced to return home to care for his ailing father). Her deft deployment of montage and stock footage effectively adds context to the location and its history, and a wry sense of humor is an always welcome touch. It can get a bit baggy at times, but the tight handheld style and realistic acting with Johan at the center keeps our interest. Three Beers.
52. Daughters
This tearjerker of a documentary won big at the festival, and it’s no surprise as to why. It’s about a prison that puts together a Father/Daughter Dance as a way to allow both a connection that is otherwise nigh impossible. We follow the girls and men separately as they anticipate what the event may be like, and when they are finally brought together it is ecstatic and tragic all at once. Their story doesn’t end there, of course, with challenges that may even feel more acute after this brief burst of sunshine, but the film ends with a telling statistic- 95% of the men who have taken part in the program have not reoffended. Two Beers.
53. In the Summers
The Dramatic Director’s Award-winner at the festival tells another story that jumps time periods, as a father is visited by his two daughters across four different summers spread across a decade or so. Their relationship (and their identities) go through their ups and downs (more downs, really, as the weight of past mistakes and modeled behaviors manifests itself). What goes unsaid is as loud as any argument, as time may heal all wounds, but that doesn’t mean there are no scars. Three Beers.
54. Love Me
This was one of the buzzier titles pre-festival thanks to the presence of Kristen Stewart and Steve Yeun and the off-kilter premise- a S.M.A.R.T. buoy and a satellite fall in love after the extinction of humanity. Some critics didn’t know what to do with it after watching, though, as the film basically goes from Wall-E to The SIMs to the Stewart and Yeun-starring relationship drama they may have thought they were getting. I was here for it, though, as their gradual, millennia-long development from machines to man and woman in love is not one we’ve seen before, and the occasional goofy awkwardness is part of the point. Three Beers.
55. Exhibiting Forgiveness
This powerful drama comes from a first-time director who made his name in other mediums- Titus Kaphar, a painter, sculptor, and installation artist with works in the greatest museums on Earth. Here he tells a tale that has at least elements of autobiography, starring as it does Andre Holland as a famous painter. Hopefully that’s as far as it goes, as Holland is knocked off center when his ex-addict and formerly(?) abusive father reenters his mother’s and ergo his life. Holland and John Earl Jelks, who plays his father, are titanic, although Aunjanue Ellis-Harper as his mother and Andra Day as his wife are also superb. Two Beers.
