Review: "The Secret Agent" is a mischievous masterpiece

by Cláudio Alves

Today, The Secret Agent begins its Oscar-qualifying run, ahead of an awards season it enters full of high hopes. And why not? At Cannes, Kleber Mendonça Filho won the Best Director trophy while Wagner Moura was picked as Best Actor by the Main Competition jury, a set of honors complemented by the FIPRESCI prize, which made it the Croisette's most awarded film. Between critical acclaim and yet more festival hardware, The Secret Agent was announced as Brazil's official submission for the 98th Academy Awards, where it surely hopes to replicate some of I'm Still Here's success from last year. Right now, it's up for two Gotham awards, competing in the categories of Best Original Screenplay and Outstanding Lead Performance. 

All that said, at this time of the year, it's easy to let oneself think about cinema exclusively in these terms. The race for gold is a thrilling diversion, yet it shouldn't distract us from appreciating the art for what it is. Nor should it flatten how we look at film. In The Secret Agent's case, this is especially true as it's a work much greater than any award could hope to be. Pardon the hyperbole, but I'd easily call it a masterpiece, an instant classic even…

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Pt 2: International Feature Race - Auteur Spotlight

by Nathaniel R

SOUTH KOREA's Park Chan Wook & Lee Byung Hun [image via Lee Byung hun's Instagram]

To broaden your appreciation of this year's Best International Feature Film Oscar race we already looked at some overall trivia. Before we get to the movie stars (the finale of this three-parter), let's look at some stats involving the artists behind the camera. It's auteur season! We're highlighting 8 directors due to their critical reputation, being a cinephile fetish object, or having previous Oscar history... or in some cases all three! We'll start with...

3 ICONS

• Park Chan-wook (South Korea's No Other Choice) 
Remarkably this 62 year-old auteur and Academy member has only been submitted twice by South Korea  despite a rich filmography...

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Pt 1 International Feature Oscar Race: Stats, Trivia, Genres

by Nathaniel R

You can watch THE LAST DANCE (Hong Kong's Oscar Submission) right now!

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED (11/21) WITH NEW RELEASE DATES.

Aside from the actress categories and eye candy crafts, longtime readers know that the awards season race I obsess over most is Best International Feature Film. This desire to jump around the Globe, sampling cinematic cuisines, was born early in me, thanks to arthouse theaters in Detroit Michigan where I grew up and a French teacher in High School who dragged the class to French movies downtown. Later international cinema programs in university and the Oscars themselves kept building the interest in what happens outside of Hollywood. The amount of subtitled features I manage to catch varies wildly from year to year but the desire to follow it all, has always been there.

We're just a few weeks away from the moment when Oscar voters narrow this race way down to 15 films so herewith 3 trivia laden posts on stats, trivia, genre, directors, and movie stars that you'll find this season in the Best International Feature Film Submission List. Let's start the trivia, stats, and anedcotes with the films that you can see right now followed by notes about genre, running time, and linguistics... 

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TIFF 50: Between Spain and the Sahara in "Nomad Shadow," "Sirât" and "Calle Málaga"

by Cláudio Alves

Histories of colonialism were omnipresent at TIFF, even in films that, at first glance, might not seem to be in dialogue with these imperial pasts and legacies. Consider the matter of Spanish occupation in North Africa, how it has influenced tensions in the region long after the purported triumph of decolonial movements and still lives, haunting-like, in the contested partition of the Western Sahara between Morocco and Mauritania. Sometimes, it's something as simple as the children of colonial rule living in a limbo of their ancestors' making, caught in cultural intersections that feel bound to unravel any day now. 

In his feature debut, Nomad Shadow, Eimi Imanishi touches on some of these realities through the story of a Sahrawi woman deported from Spain, while Oliver Laxe's Sirât dances entranced across a minefield on the disputed desert. Finally, Maryam Touzani sings a song of displacement in Calle Málaga, where Carmen Maura – the original Chica Almodóvar! – must abandon the life she's always known in Tangiers after her daughter arrives from Madrid with terrible news. These latter two are their countries' submissions for the 98th Academy Awards, with Sirât representing Spain and Calle Málaga Morocco…

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TIFF 50: Colombia's "A Poet" and Japan's "Kokuho"

by Cláudio Alves

It's easy to understand why artists would be drawn to stories about artists. Self-reflection is a powerful siren call, and the particularities of another creative's tale can help you elide the pitfalls of more direct auto-fiction. This is especially true for those who consider the artistic practices beyond their chosen medium. In this year's Oscar race for Best International Film, we find two such projects. They represent journeys of inverse success, one about failure and the other focused on glory beyond reason. But of course, such greatness comes with a price that can be as bitter as a floundering. A film looks at the smallness of man, another at being bigger than life, inspiring awe and alienation, losing humanity along the way.

First up, there's Simón Mesa Soto's A Poet, representing Colombia. And then Lee Sang-il's Kokuho, selected by Japan after proving itself a box office hit…

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