TIFF '24: "The Wild Robot" brings Monet to a Miyazaki Forest

by Cláudio Alves

Many have rightfully said that animation isn't so much a genre as a different medium than live-action cinema altogether. Though many of the same rules apply, audiovisual grammar and specific dramatic codes, there's a depth of craft and intentionality to its image-making that exceeds what can be achieved between a camera and our material reality. Such rhetoric tends to manifest only when analyzing more avant-garde efforts in the realm of animation, but even the most mainstream of productions deserves these considerations. Chris Sanders' The Wild Robot is a good example, borne out of DreamWorks with eyes set on the future of its medium, expanding technological horizons while inventing new forms of cinematic beauty…

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TIFF' 24: Three Documentaries, Three Portraits of Resistance

by Cláudio Alves

A moment of joyful defiance in SUDAN, REMEMBER US.

Documentary cinema tends to get the short shrift regarding festival coverage, unless one's dealing with a strictly non-fiction fest. It seems made-up stories and dramatized truths will always excite mainstream audiences in ways that documentaries won't. Perchance, it all comes down to the need for cinema as escape. Perhaps it's more about historical trends and industry prescriptiveness. Whatever the case, it's a pity because the medium's future is often found outside the confines of narrative filmmaking. Moreover, when looking at political cinema, the potential directness of documentaries cannot be overstated, charging at issues head-on rather than through the oblique avenues of fiction. 

At TIFF 2024, three documentaries felt especially urgent, even when regarding the historical past. They're stories of resistance in its many forms – Hind Meddeb's Sudan, Remember Us, Raoul Peck's Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, and Santiago Esteinou's The Freedom of Fierro…

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Interview: Director Maura Delpero on Italy's new Oscar Submission "Vermiglio"

by Elisa Giudici

Photo Credit: Biennale di Venezia

Today, the Italian selection committee announced that Vermiglio by Maura Delpero would represent Italy at the 97th Oscars, competing in the Best International Feature category "for its ability to portray rural Italy of the past, with sentiments and themes that are universal and current."

The film, presented at the Venice Film Festival, won the Grand Jury Prize and received enthusiastic praise from critics. Just minutes after the announcement, Maura Delpero participated in a press conference to share her reaction to the news, discuss the first audience screenings in Italy just days before the national release, her upcoming festival commitments, and her long journey to this achievement...

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TIFF '24: For the Dead and the Dying and Those Left Behind

by Cláudio Alves

Vincent Cassel and Guy pearce in David Cronenberg's THE SHROUDS.

All of us are on a long journey into death, set on a collision course with the great end that nothing can entirely prevent and no one can avoid forever. Artists are no different, mere mortals like the rest of us. However, the nature of their work means those persons' relationship with our collective finality may take unexpected forms, many of them public. Whether a creator wants it or not, when the finish line comes into conscious sight, their creation shall reflect it. Mortality subsumes the art, even when buried deep within layers of escapism, deflection, and delusion. The brave ones disregard such distractions and stare at the monster head-on. For them, late style is a cinema of death.

Consider the most recent works from two of our greatest masters – David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader. The Shrouds and Oh, Canada are meditations on mortality, made for the dead and dying and, most importantly, those left behind, waiting for their own end…

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TIFF '24: "Mistress Dispeller" pours ice water over heated marital melodrama

by Cláudio Alves

Elizabeth Lo's latest documentary has one hell of a premise. In modern-day China, a middle-class, middle-aged couple is going through a commonplace crisis we've seen portrayed in cinema a thousand times before. Mr. Li is having an affair with a younger woman, becoming increasingly distant from his spouse. Faced with heartbreak, Mrs. Li won't take the situation with the resigned acquiescence of a long-suffering wife. She categorically refuses to. And here's where Mistress Dispeller takes an odd turn, for the jilted spouse hires the titular professional, Wang Zhenxi, who specializes in the dissolution of such affairs.

Infiltrating the family as a distant relative, the mistress dispeller spends months investigating and reconstructing a broken bond. And somehow, Lo's camera is always there to watch it unfold…

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