Ken Loach’s Palme D’Or Winner I, Daniel Blake is a bracing call-to-action against bureaucratic failures to treat citizens like people. But it falters by making its hero uncontroversially the Deserving Poor without challenging this as a concept. This review was originally published on December 30, 2016, and has been re-published for the film’s Canadian release.
[Read more…] about Review: I, Daniel Blake is a declaration of personhoodSocial Justice
Explore stories about marginalized groups and the pursuit of a more fair society.
Age in Place: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius
Jesse Thompson explores sound, place, and gentrification in Aquarius and its parallels to the realities of real estate in Sydney, Australia.
[Read more…] about Age in Place: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s AquariusAva DuVernay’s 13th is an innovative spin on the talking head doc
Employing key but subtle twists on the convention talking head documentary, Ava DuVernay’s 13th explains how slavery in the U.S. was never really abolished without ever resorting to preaching.
[Read more…] about Ava DuVernay’s 13th is an innovative spin on the talking head docArabian Nights is an intoxicating, maddening mosaic of recession-era Portugal
Brandon Nowalk reviews Arabian Nights, which he describes as the blind men’s elephant: miniseries and short story cycle, documentary and fantasy, proletarian and prohibitive. It’s an enormous six-hour movie split into three volumes, made up mostly of separate smaller stories. The film is available on VOD, Fandor, and Blu Ray.
[Read more…] about Arabian Nights is an intoxicating, maddening mosaic of recession-era PortugalThe politics of sisterhood in Mustang
Mustang, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s directorial debut, charts five sisters’ resistance, as they both grow into and reject a narrow notion of womanhood. But Ergüven privileges perspectives that a Western audience can understand and approve of, making the story too familiar and incomplete.
[Read more…] about The politics of sisterhood in Mustang3000 Nights explores motherhood behind bars
Mais Masri’s 3000 Nights was a highlight of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, a film by a female director that flew largely under-the-radar. Check out our coverage of other great films directed by women here.
Mai Masri’s 3000 Nights shares some plot points with the TIFF audience-award-winner, Room: an unjustly imprisoned woman finds new hope and purpose from the birth of her son, who remains confined with her for years. Masri’s film layers the political turmoil between Palestine and Israel onto this narrative, as the film’s protagonist Layal (Maisa Abd Elhadi) is a Palestinian woman trapped in an Israeli prison. Like Brie Larson’s character in Room, motherhood opens Layal to her compassion, often letting it guide her even when her anger is overwhelming.
Not only are Palestinian political prisoners afforded fewer rights and privileges than Israeli ones, but they’re also forced to wear uniforms to make their status as Palestinians known within the prison. Though singling out the Palestinians helps them incur the wrath of Israeli prisoners who see them as terrorists, the real threats are the female guards who take daily delight in denigrating the Palestinian women, if not flat out beating and torturing them.
During her eight years in prison seen in 3000 Nights, Layal grows from a strong woman unsure of how to survive prison into someone who learns to play the system, stand up for herself, protect her son, and even rebel against injustice at great personal cost. Abd Elhadi gives a powerful performance as a woman transformed by her harsh experiences. Layal starts as a newly pregnant newlywed, encouraged by her husband and the prison warden to abort, and she ends as a mother driven by compassion and a sense of justice. This allows her to find an unlikely friend in an Israeli prisoner whom she saves from over-dosing. These women find that they have more in common, despite their nationalities, than differences.