“Will it come back after the festival?” is a question most fest-goers consider when evaluating programmes overflowing with strong selections. After all, you can’t catch ’em all…
Some of the films listed below may confirm your educated guesses, others may be finding their way onto your radar for the very first time. Either way, here are some recommendations from summer’s crop of festival favourites.
The Golden Spurtle
The golden what now? You’ll feel more confident when buying your ticket to learn that it’s the annual worldwide porridge-making championship. Huh? Exactly. This doco travels to Scotland to explore a competitive side to this assemblage of oats, water and salt. “You’d have to be dead inside not to succumb to its innate charms,” said Stephen A Russell after catching the film at Sydney Film Festival.
Sentimental Value
Joachim Trier is back, reuniting with The Worst Person in the World’s Renate Reinsve in this generational drama that also features Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. As Rory Doherty reported from Cannes, “It’s a confident, affecting look at how art can equally facilitate and get in the way of healing, and a worthy Grand Prix (second place) winner”.
Anchor Me: The Don McGlashan Story
Anchor Me - The Don McGlashan Story
There are many entry points to the work of Don McGlashan—Blam Blam Blam, From Scratch, The Front Lawn, The Mutton Birds and as a solo artist. Shirley Horrocks takes a chronological path through the living legend’s output in this doco, which I caught at the NZ International Film Festival, from which I remarked: “The strong visual accompaniments to much of his work, and his seeming fearlessness as a performer, are apparent throughout, with glimpses of some shorts and vids nothing short of magnificent.”
The Secret Agent
In a Cannes award-winning performance, Wagner Moura stars as a former professor turned political refugee during Brazil’s military dictatorship of the 70s. The Secret Agent also won Best Director at Cannes, with Rory Doherty declaring both awards as well-deserved in his coverage from the fest. Just in case you were expecting 007 based on the title, he also helpfully explains: “The film is not a tightly-wound espionage thriller, but rather a tense, emotional and novelistic film.”
It Was Just An Accident
Jafar Panahi’s drama about a chance encounter bringing a group of present-day Iranians into contact with their state-sanctioned tormentor (…or is he?) won the Palme d’Or and has impressed all around the festival circuit. Surprisingly comic and crowd-pleasing at times, as Katie Parker wrote in our NZ International Film Festival coverage: “The final 20 or so minutes, in which this levity gives way to the dread and horror that has been bubbling beneath are not so much a bait and switch as the revelation of something that was hiding in plain sight all along.”
Sirât
Opening on a beautifully shot desert rave with a lovingly crafted audio mix to match, Sirât becomes a gripping journey across Morocco’s desert and mountains, places of transcendence and trauma as its best-left-unspoiled narrative unfurls. “By far my favourite SFF experience this year,” declared Stephen A Russell from Sydney, while on the other side of the Tasman, I described the film as “superb” and recommending the big(gest) screen experience: “Seen as big and loud as possible, it stuns eyes, rattles ears and shakes nerves.”
The President’s Cake
Another Cannes-winner (this time the Caméra d’Or and the Director’s Fortnight Audience Award) returns to screens. Set in 90s Iraq, post-Kuwait invasion, it follows two kids trying to scrounge together the ingredients to bake a mandatory cake celebrating Saddam Hussein’s birthday. “Deceptively simple, there are multitudes just below the surface,” said Stephen A Russell after seeing writer/director Hasan Hadi’s “beautifully judged debut feature” at Sydney Film Festival.
