In this episode of the TIFF 2024 podcast season, Alex Heeney discusses two Ralph Fiennes films: Edward Berger’s Conclave and Uberto Pasolini’s The Return.
View all of our TIFF 2024 coverage
TIFF 2024 Ep.6: Ralph Fiennes x 2: The Return and Conclave
TIFF 2024
TIFF 2024 Ep. 5: Bicultural daughters and their absent fathers: My Father’s Daughter, Winter in Sokcho, and A Missing Part
In this episode of the TIFF 2024 podcast season, Alex discusses three films about bicultural daughters and their absent fathers: My Father’s Daughter, Winter in Sokcho, and A Missing Part.
View all of our TIFF 2024 coverage
Don’t miss a single episode. Become a member.
Get exclusive access to our entire podcast archive, members-only episodes, and early access to new podcast seasons.
TIFF 2024 Film Review: Guillaume Senez’s A Missing Part
Alex Heeney reviews Belgian filmmaker Guillaume Senez’s third feature film, A Missing Part screening in the TIFF Special Presentations section. The film is about a French man searching for his Japanese daughter in Tokyo after years of separation because joint custody isn’t possible.
Listen to our TIFF 2024 podcast on bicultural daughters and their absent fathers Subscribe to the podcast to stay updated
Read all of our TIFF 2024 coverage.
Never miss a great film again. Get exclusive content and hidden-gem recommendations you won’t find on the website.
Click here to sign up for the Seventh Row Newsletter.
In Guillaume Senez’s film A Missing Part, French taxi driver Jay (Romain Duris) lives in Tokyo, where he is married to (but separated from) a woman he pays alimony to but whose whereabouts – and that of the daughter they share – are unknown. His Japanese wife effectively kidnapped his daughter when she was three, granting her full custody by Japanese law. He’s been searching for his daughter for eight years. Just as he plans to sell his house and return home to France, he gets a lead that could change his plans entirely.
This sensitively made feature from Senez is a character study about a father who isn’t allowed to be a father, an unjust system that won’t allow joint custody, and the people caught within it. Carefully observed, Senez finds moments of joy and grace in an often brutal world and asks what sacrifices a father would make to see his daughter – when long-term and short-term goals may be at loggerheads.
Listen to the podcast
Listen to the podcast on Bi-cultural daughters and their absent fathers at TIFF 2024 for a more detailed discussion of the film A Missing Part.
On the podcast, I discuss the films A Missing Part, Winter in Sokcho, and My Father’s Daughter.
TIFF 2024 Film Review: Koya Kamura’s Winter in Sokcho
Alex Heeney reviews Japanese-French filmmaker Koya Kamura’s impressive debut film, Winter in Sokcho, screening in the TIFF Platform Competition.
Listen to our TIFF 2024 podcast on bicultural daughters and their absent fathers Subscribe to the podcast to stay updated
Read all of our TIFF 2024 coverage.
Never miss a great film again. Get exclusive content and hidden-gem recommendations you won’t find on the website.
Click here to sign up for the Seventh Row Newsletter.
Japanese-French filmmaker Koya Kamura’s impressively realized feature debut, Winter in Sokcho, is a story about a place, a young woman’s search for identity and place in the world, and a brief encounter between a visiting French artist and a Korean hotel worker. Soo-ha works at a lodging house in Sokcho, in her hometown; it may be a dead-end job where she’s killing time before she really starts her life or perhaps this could lead to something long-term. She is non-committal with her high school boyfriend, who dreams of being a model in Seoul and is superficial, whereas Soo-ha is serious. And she worries about her aging, lonely mother, who one day soon may not be so independent.
Soo-ha’s life gets upended when a French graphic artist comes to stay in the hotel. Her boss encourages Soo-ha to help the artist with everything he needs, from finding paper and ink to taking him to the demilitarized zone and the border to showing him around town. Their tentative friendship of forced proximity gives Soo-ha a taste of what her mother may have experienced with her French engineer father, who left Sokcho before Soo-ha was born.
A beautifully made film
An ode to the blues, greys, and whites of Sokcho – the production design and costumes match the landscape – a beautiful place that the inhabitants rarely remember to enjoy, so focused are they on the daily grind or escaping. Kamura is sensitive to the boundaries people build and break, tracking Soo-ha’s desire for a growing intimacy with the artist through how she invades his personal space – in the hotel, in the frame, and by one ill-advised touch of the hand. This is a satisfying, emotionally resonant film about family, identity, and finding your own path, featuring a breakout performance from Bella Kim.
Listen to the podcast on the TIFF 2024 film Winter in Sokcho
Listen to the podcast on Bi-cultural daughters and their absent fathers at TIFF 2024 for a more detailed discussion of the film Winter in Sokcho.
TIFF 2024 Film Review: Egil Pederson’s My Father’s Daughter
Alex Heeney reviews Sámi filmmaker Egil Pederson’s film My Father’s Daughter at TIFF 2024
Listen to our TIFF 2024 podcast on bicultural daughters and their absent fathers Subscribe to the podcast to stay updated
Read all of our TIFF 2024 coverage.
Never miss a great film again. Get exclusive content and hidden-gem recommendations you won’t find on the website.
Click here to sign up for the Seventh Row Newsletter.
Sámi-Norwegian filmmaker Egil Pederson’s My Father’s Daughter begins with a sort of Looking for Eric premise before expanding into a very thoughtful, often funny, coming-of-ager about the search for identity and the impossibility of ever really finding it. Sámi teenager Elvira (Sarah Olaussen Eira in a winning breakout performance) has spent her whole life believing she was a test tube baby with a Danish sperm donor, who, in her mind, is Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones), who appears to comfort her as an imaginary dad friend.
Having spent her life vehemently rejecting her Sámi identity, she suddenly finds herself unsure who she is when she discovers her father might be Sámi, too. Elvira responds to the revelation about her father by suddenly embracing her Sámi identity in ways that seem not particularly authentic. In one hilarious piece of subtle production design, her poster of Coster-Waldau gets replaced with one for the film Sámi Blood.
Exploring the challenges of a minority identity in the film My Father’s Daughter
For Pederson, figuring out your identity as a minority is an often funny minefield when everyone around you wants to leverage that identity for personal gain. Pederson sets up Elvira’s influencer classmate as a foil, as she’s constantly manipulating her own identity by claiming authenticity. At one point, she uses her connection to Elvira and Elvira’s Sámi identity to get more followers. When she thinks Elvira might be queer, too, it’s like a jackpot.
But everyone around Elvira struggles with their identity. Her best friend is constantly reading Karl Marx as though his pontifications on women were gospel. Her mother has recently come out as queer and started dating a woman but hasn’t quite figured out appropriate boundaries; Elvira regularly catches them making out. Elvira’s father turns up out of the blue, suddenly claiming being a father is crucial to his identity after years of absence. Everyone gives Elvira contradictory and bad advice about how a person should be. My Father’s Daughter is a sharp, satirical look at the irony of trying on different identities you can’t claim in search of your own identity.
Listen to the podcast on the TIFF 2024 film My Father’s Daughter
Listen to the podcast on Bi-cultural daughters and their absent fathers at TIFF 2024 for a more detailed discussion of the film My Father’s Daughter.
TIFF 2024 Ep. 4: British social realism: Andrea Arnold’s Bird and Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths
In this episode of the TIFF 2024 podcast, Alex discusses two new works from British social realist filmmakers Andrea Arnold and Mike Leigh: Bird and Hard Truths.
View all of our TIFF 2024 coverage
Don’t miss a single episode. Become a member.
Get exclusive access to our entire podcast archive, members-only episodes, and early access to new podcast seasons.
