TIFF 50: Xin Zhilei earns the Volpi Cup in "The Sun Rises on Us All"

by Cláudio Alves

Every year, folks think they can predict the wiles and ways of festival juries, forgetting that the smallness of such groups often privileges idiosyncratic tastes and produces shocking results. A jury festival is not deferent to critical consensus, so looking at reviews to divine their decisions is a fool's errand. Moreover, there's a tendency to think only the presupposed big players will vie for plaudits. It isn't so, and, honestly, that's a good thing. For sure, there are those who'll cry about Amanda Seyfried or Emma Stone not taking the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, but I'm glad Xin Zhilei got the prize instead.

Having watched Cai Shangjun's The Sun Rises on Us All at TIFF, I can confirm she makes for a worthy champion...

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Halfway done with the Best International Film list?

by Nathaniel R

Behind the scenes I've been updating the Best International Film submission charts daily. At this writing we have 43 titles, which means we're about halfway done. We still haven't heard which title will represent heavy-hitters like Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, or last year's winner Brazil (though we do have finalists lists for a few of those mainstays of the category). We also impatiently await the decisions from three countries (China, Hong Kong, India) with major cinema industry that voters strangely resist on the regular (sigh). So check out the three charts (A-G / H-N / P-Y) and the current finalist list predictions.  Yes, the other Oscar charts will get an update very soon. We'll start when TIFF announces their People's Choice prize.

Today i wanted to highlight four of the newer submissions that I'm excited to see if I ever get the opportunity...

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TIFF 50: The cranes are flying in "The Tale of Silyan"

by Cláudio Alves

According to Macedonian legend, there was once a boy called Silyan who wished to go far away, leave his village behind, and spread his wings into the world beyond. But when he told his father, the patriarch flew into a rage, cursing the name of the child and his dreams along with it. Answering these paternal furies, the heavens opened above, releasing a mighty force that struck the boy. He didn't die, though. Instead, as the father had decreed, Sylian turned into a stork who could now do as he wanted and leave everything that he knew. But this freedom was not to be an idyll. It was a cursed existence, lonely and unmoored, caught in the space between worlds and belonging to nowhere. 

Tamara Kotevska uses this folktale as the jumping start from which her latest exercise soars into the cinematic heavens above. The Tale of Silyan, which was just announced as North Macedonia’s submission for the 98^th Academy Awards, marks the director's second feature since she, along with Ljubomir Stefanov, helmed the Oscar-nominated Honeyland...

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Golden Lion Winner Reviewed: "Father Mother Sister Brother"

by Elisa Giudici

Tom Wait in Jim Jarmusch's FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER

On the closing night of Venice 82, the Golden Lion went to Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother. The decision immediately set off a storm of controversy. The overwhelming favorite had been Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia's Oscar submission, and a film that electrified audiences with its urgency and moral weight. Yet once again, the jury—this year led by Alexander Payne—opted for a different kind of statement: not the raw political immediacy of Gaza, but the quieter, “career-crowning” recognition of a grand elder of cinema.

This dynamic is nothing new on the Lido...

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TIFF 50: A Linklater Double Feature

by Cláudio Alves

Nowadays, if you're not named Hong Sang-soo, it's rare for a director to release multiple features in the same year. Rarer still for these projects to land on the main competition of two of the big three European film festivals, even winning an award when all is said and done. Well, that was the case this year for Richard Linklater, who bowed Blue Moon at Berlin and then took Nouvelle Vague to Cannes. Now, as happens with various of those fests' juiciest prospects, they are also playing at TIFF, where I had the luck to experience them back to back, finishing the day with a good old-fashioned double feature. Unfortunately, it's an unbalanced pair formed by one of the most disposable follies in the director's career and a gem seemingly composed to be seen as a minor work, that nevertheless sings the song of a major achievement…

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