Interview: Alain Gomis on Why Senegal's Oscar Submission 'Félicité' is a Film About the Modern World

By Jose Solís

The title heroine of Félicité is unlike any film character you’ve met. As played by Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu, she’s both larger than life and an everywoman trying to make a living as a singer in a Kinshasan bar. When her son Samo (Gaetan Claudia) has a devastating motorcycle accident, Félicité is forced to go in a race against time, as she tries to find the money to pay for his treatment. But this is only the first of Félicité’s many plights and before we know it, the film has become a soulful character study in which a woman must learn to accept love from others. If the film sounds like a social drama, it’s only because director Alain Gomis uses that familiar structure to invite us into a world that will seem new to many, but once inside he defies the conventions of genre and traditional plot to convey something more lyrical.

The film has been selected as Senegal’s official Oscar entry and is now playing in select US theaters. I spoke to Gomis during the New York Film Festival, where the film was shown, and learned about his process, and why he thinks his film is a reflection of the modern world. Read the interview after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Save the Date(s) ~ Awards Season Calendar

The Awards Happy months begin! Your guide to the remaining important calendar dates of the year. Televised ceremonies, crucial influencer nominations, and all actual Oscar-related events are in bold. 

NOVEMBER

2 Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards

3 Thor Ragnarok, Lady Bird, and Last Flag Flying open

5 European Film Award Nominations
5 The Film Experience's "Supporting Actress Smackdown" of 1944

10 Three Billboards, Murder on the Orient Express, and Thelma (Norway's Oscar submission)

Click to read more ...

LAFCA Honors Max von Sydow with Career Achievement Award

by Daniel Crooke

There’s something inherently epic about Max von Sydow’s body of work, a near seven-decade span marked by performances of quiet magnanimity in tales of biblical proportions, literally and thematically. More often than not, his mere presence – lanky yet lancing, wispy and towering, handsome and weary, often perturbed by the particulars of his environment  – conjures a lightning bolt of philosophical inquiry into each scene.

After exorcising (not to mention playing chess with, and later playing) the devil, portraying a host of priests, popes, cardinals, and apostles, directors and professors, living-breathing ciphers, and the occasional everyman, von Sydow will be awarded the Career Achievement prize this year from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association...

Click to read more ...

BIFA Nominations: Lady Macbeth and Three Billboards Boosts

by Nathaniel R

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool received 4 nominationsHot on the heels of the Gotham Awards, the British Independent Film Awards have announced their 2017 nominations. Though they don't tend to get much press in the US due to the the first two words in their title, they're worth noting. And, we'd argue, they're worth noting precisely for their limited jurisdiction. Awards groups with their own identity / purview are all too rare. Lady Macbeth led the field (15 nominations) with gay romantic drama God's Own Country (11 nominations), political satire The Death of Stalin (13 nominations), I Am Not a Witch (12 nominations) and one big tragicomedy Oscar hopeful Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (11 nominations) also super popular

I think the nomination I'm happiest to see (just because it was no sure thing) is Jamie Bell in Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool for Best Actor. He's just brilliant in the film as I've mentioned before but it's the type of role -- nuanced / romantic / skewing "feminine" in its appeal -- for which male actors are rarely honored no matter how good they are. The complete list of nominees is after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Soundtracking: "Meet Me In St. Louis"

The 1944 Smackdown is coming, so Chris looks at that year's musical masterpiece...

They don’t get much more timeless than Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me In St. Louis. It’s a musical about the family unit, and fittingly almost all of the numbers take place in the home. Whether in party revelry or the everyday household ubiquity of the title song, music is as much a definitive tradition of the Smith family as anything else. Grandpa may screw up the words, and it may be past the youngest’s bedtime, but music is one of the things that bind them. It also helps when one of the daughters is Judy Garland, I suppose.

Though St. Louis has relatively few musical numbers (unless you count umpteen reprises of that title song), its percentage of classics is nearly as high as its joy levels. “The Trolley Song” is the kind of showstopper that wins by the charm of its performer and its carefree whimsy. The “chug chug chug” silliness is exactly the kind of giddy uplift you have when falling in love, especially when you are in a musical. No matter that it’s actually kind of a strange metaphor for Garland’s Esther to use about her crush. Of all the love songs in Judy Garland’s singular repertoire, it is the sweetest...

Click to read more ...