The Mehdipour family in a still from Hamy Ramezan’s ‘Any Day Now’, photo courtesy of Aamu Film Company, photo by Sami Kuokkanen
It was hard for me to fully wrap my head around the fact that ‘Any Day Now’ is Hamy Ramezan’s first feature film. This 80-some minutes story of an Iranian boy and his family, awaiting their fate as refugees in Finland is so profoundly perfect that I imagined a seasoned filmmaker at its helm.
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At the center of the story by the Greek native is a troubled father/daughter relationship, revisited when the father Paris, played with stunning vulnerability by Lazaros Georgakopoulos, develops Multiple Sclerosis or MS. The daughter Artemis, a force of nature in the masterful hands of actress Sofia Kokkali, ends up becoming his full time carer and in the process not only discovers something about her father she never knew, but also ends up finding herself.
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A still from ‘Liborio’ by Nino Martínez Sosa
Two films play at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam that will make you yearn to a visit to an island. Any island…
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In ‘The Cemil Show’ the film’s namesake leading character, played to perfection by Ozan Celik whom you may remember from ‘Sivas’ in 2015, is someone much like my friend and me — bad at acting, but still desperate to make it.
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Birgitte Larsen in a still from ‘Gritt’ the debut feature by Itonje Søimer Guttormsen
In her debut feature ‘Gritt’ filmmaker Itonje Søimer Guttormsen, with the help of leading actress Birgitte Larsen, makes Gritt the perfect anti-heroine we will all aspire to be, once we’ve watched her quiet masterpiece.
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Dr. Martin Luther King in Sam Pollard’s ‘MLK/FBI’. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release
In a new, stunning archival documentary by Sam Pollard titled ‘MLK/FBI’ the charismatic figure of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is shown against the backdrop of just that America — which we believed long forgotten but which we’ve witnessed first hand in the past four years, while governed by a man with ideas of grandeur.
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Jamal Khashoggi, right, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman
On October 2nd, 2018 Saudi journalist and Washington Post opinion blogger Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey never to exit it again. What happened inside could have remained a mystery except that the Turkish authorities had put into place an intricate and advanced system of surveillance on the Saudis and Khashoggi’s demise was captured in vivid sounds for all to hear. In a new documentary titled ‘The Dissident’ Oscar-winning filmmaker Bryan Fogel examines the life and death of Khashoggi.
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A still from ‘The Translator’ directed by Anas Khalaf and Rana Kazkaz
While there have been loads of documentaries about Syria and its place in the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011, no narrative film has even come close to the way ‘The Translator’ tells the story. A complete story that goes as far back as the first Syrian revolts in 1980 under Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez which resulted in the Hama massacre in 1982. The filmmakers telling this spellbinding story are husband and wife team Anas Khalaf and Rana Kazkaz, both multi-hyphenated nationalities but at the center of it all, Syrian. Because let’s face it, there are currently many more Syrian living spread out around the world than in Syria itself.
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Nicolas and Aurelien hold little Louise in a still from ‘Ghosts of the République’ by Jonathon Narducci
A couple, a love affair, a wedding day and then the desire to have a child together. It’s everyone’s dream, yet if the couple we are part of isn’t the norm in this world, there will be obstacles ahead. Love is difficult enough if you’re straight, so if the couple happens to be gay, the challenges multiply by the thousands.
In the upcoming 'Ghosts of the République’ a wonderful documentary which will begin streaming on November 17th, we watch the love affair of French couple Nicolas and Aurelien unfolding.
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A still from ‘I Am Greta’ courtesy of Hulu
Thanks to filmmaker Nathan Grossman and an upcoming Hulu documentary which will premiere in North America on November 13th, I was pleasantly surprised. Within ‘I Am Greta’ I discovered a complex young woman filled with strong ideals and the right vulnerability to drive those principles home — make them seem like we all should get on board of the sustainability train to save our beloved planet. Pardon the pun.
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The Spanish born, French-educated Oliver Laxe, who made the much beloved 2016 award winning ‘Mimosas’ as well as ‘You Are All Captains’ in 2010, has a way with slow and steady. ‘Fire Will Come’ is no exception.
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Photo by David Lee ©, courtesy of HBO and used with permission
We live in unimaginable times. And yet there were many who were able to foresee this future, this current new world, long before it happened. Among them, singer/songwriter/artist and all around renaissance man David Byrne, and the American national treasure that is Spike Lee.
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In their latest documentary ‘War and Wine’, filmmakers and world travelers Mark Johnston and Mark Ryan explore the world of winemaking in Lebanon. And in the process, they manage to show us perfectly the humanity, resilience and beauty of both the country and its people.
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Ali Suliman plays Mustafa, a father separated from his family by a wall, in Ameen Nayfeh’s ‘200 Meters’
A father, his family, a wall. It’s a theme, an image we think of often these days, particularly when speaking of certain American policies and our current US President. But where is another part of the world where such a policy has been tried and tested, and of course, failed miserably on a human scale? Palestine, or Israel if you wish to call it with its post-1948 name. A land belonging to many and claimed by some.
In Ameen Nayfeh’s quiet masterpiece ‘200 Meters’, which premiered as part of the Giornate degli Autori lineup in Venice this year, Palestinian superstar Ali Suliman plays Mustafa, a loving husband and doting father.
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Achintya Bose and Manish Chauhan in ‘Yeh Ballet’, image courtesy of Netflix
If you google the film ‘Yeh Ballet’ you’ll find that the Wikipedia short description reads like this: “Discovered by an eccentric ballet master, two gifted but underprivileged Mumbai teens face bigotry and disapproval as they pursue their dancing dreams.” And those sort of stories are always the best kind — yet Sooni Taraporevala’s film goes one step further. Or rather several beautiful, seamless dance steps further.
As someone who had fallen in love with Taraporevala’s heartfelt way of making films through her directorial debut ‘Little Zizou’ — a childhood story taking place in the Parsi community in South Bombay — ‘Yeh Ballet’ only intensified this cinematic love story.
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The Families for Freedom bus in London — a still from ‘Ayouni’
“Whenever you throw stones into the sea, it sends ripples through me.” — Dunya Mikhail
Bookended at its beginning and end by the stunning stanza from the esteemed Iraqi-American poet quoted above, the documentary ‘Ayouni’ proves both a heartbreaker and a dream maker of a film. Now let me explain.
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When I spent time in Paris with the late Richard Lormand, a film publicist whose passion for world cinema was a constant inspiration to those who knew him, he spoke often about “Farooki” and his 2017 film ‘No Bed of Roses’. Richard had represented the Bangladeshi filmmaker’s previous work in festivals and was really saddened that his latest wasn’t featured in Venice. It starred Irrfan Khan, whom we both adored and had seen in Locarno the year before. Whenever Richard spoke of a film, it turned into something magical and I could not rest until I had watched it.
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Ziad Bakri and Maria Zreik in Zain Duraie’s ‘Give Up the Ghost’
One of the hottest button issues for a modern woman concerns her ability to have a child. Depending on which society you are born into, it ranges from being a duty to a God-given right, with all shades of grey in between.
In her haunting, beautifully shot (by Benoît Chamaillard) and perfectly sound designed (by Israel Bañuelos) short film ‘Give Up the Ghost’, Jordanian filmmaker Zain Duraie explores the consequences on a marriage around the ability or inability to have a child.
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Actress Lyna Khoudri in a still from 'Papicha' by Mounia Meddour
I believe that if there were more women film critics, the business of cinema would be much different. There would be better films made, more communication between what audiences want and filmmakers create, and those projects which portray the truth of our humanity would receive the attention they deserve. 'Papicha' by Mounia Meddour would be one of those projects. Now let me explain what I mean.
‘Papicha’ is now streaming as part of the Virtual Cinema of Film at Lincoln Center, through June 4th. An act of courage if you read my piece!
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The discovery of Farah Nabulsi’s stunning, honest and beautiful film ‘The Present’ I owe to Palestinian favorite actor Saleh Bakri. I mean, as soon as I saw his name on the Brooklyn Film Festival line-up page, I was hooked. But while his presence is undeniably a wonderful pull into the film, Nabulsi’s perfect oeuvre stands on its own.
The title ‘The Present’ could refer to a gift, the one Yusuf, Bakri’s character goes to buy for his wife on their wedding anniversary. But it also means, to me, the current state of affairs, the here and now, for the Palestinian people.
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