TIFF '24: Oscar submissions from Denmark & Bulgaria

by Cláudio Alves

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE may have benefited from a different title, different expectations.
Like last year, my 2024 TIFF journey was marked by many a Best International Film Oscar submission. I've already written about some of them, including contenders from Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Palestine, and Portugal. Now, as this protracted post-festival coverage reaches its end – got to move on to NYFF at some point – let's consider the official submissions from Denmark and Bulgaria. The Cannes-competing The Girl with the Needle from Magnus von Horn, and the TIFF-premiering Triumph by Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva dramatize shocking true stories that prove Lord Byron was right. Truth really is stranger than fiction…

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TIFF '24: From the River to the Sea

by Cláudio Alves

At the Berlinale, NO OTHER LAND won the Best Documentary and Panorama Audience awards.

The 2024 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival was marked by multiple instances of political protest. PETA came for Pharrell Williams, and the documentary Russians at War had its screenings delayed until after the official festival in response to the public outcry against it. While some organizers, guests, and audience members may have grumbled about it, one should expect such demonstrations at an event that purports "to transform the way people see the world" and lead in the "creative and cultural discovery through the moving image." Like every art form, cinema is political – everything is political – and a festival's program can delineate allegiances and avenues of dialogue. In its search for plurality, it can also illuminate contradictions of its own. 

In the realm of political cinema, No Other Land and From Ground Zero, two of the year's most essential films, were screened at TIFF. Both works deal with the plight of the Palestinian people…

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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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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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