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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TIFF 50: "Noviembre" makes for a formidable debut

by Cláudio Alves

Dedicated to the memory of the victims, their families, and those still looking for the missing, Tomás Corredor's directorial debut reflects on the Palace of Justice siege in Bogotá, Colombia, without ever leaving a bathroom where M-19 guerrilleros took refuge and held hostages over two fateful days in November 1985. It starts at the close, with archival recordings over grainy blackness from which the vision of a destroyed room emerges, sunlight pouring in through a hole in the wall. One might wonder what happened here that turned a commonplace public toilet into an apocalyptic tableau such as this. Noviembre then goes back, to the beginning of the end, when the militants first took their hostages into the windowless room and signed their fates…

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NYFF '24: All hail "Pepe," the audacious!

by Cláudio Alves

How does one even start to describe Pepe? Or make sense of it? Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias's latest feature is many things – the biography of the first and last hippo to be killed in the Americas, an oblique look at Pablo Escobar's legacy and impact, an experimental travelogue, a political reckoning with the scars of colonialism in Colombia, a non-fiction and narrative hybrid, an ethnography, a poem, a thesis on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It's everything, everywhere, all at once, an audacious piece of cinema that doesn't lack ideas or ambition, so multifaceted as to leave one dizzy. Somehow, it all works. I'd go as far as saying Pepe is one of the year's best and most essential films…

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France submits "Emilia Perez". Spain chooses "Saturn Return". Mexico names finalists

by Nathaniel R

Selena Gomez in "Emilia Perez"

We've already posted two reviews of Emilia Perez here at TFE, from Elisa (pro) and Cláudio (con), and it's been a potential Oscar player since it's premiere at Cannes in May.  Today France announced that the buzzy drug cartel trans musical curiousity would represent them at the Oscars, beating out fellow finalists Misericordia, All We Imagine as Light, and The Count of Monte Cristo. This is the second time France has submitted the often thrilling auteur Jacques Audiard. His previous submission, Un Prophete, was nominated for the prize back in 2009 but surely split the 'critical consensus' vote with Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, allowing Argentina to slip between them for the win for the sleeper success The Secret in Their Eyes.  France hasn't won the Oscar in this category since 1992's Indochine. Could Emilia Perez finally spell gold again for the birthplace of cinema?

But there's lots more International Feature Oscar news after the jump...

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SXSW Review: Dreaming of ‘Malta’

By Abe Friedtanzer

The grass is always greener on the other side, and it’s easy to imagine that things might be better if only something was different. Natalia Santa’s sophomore feature Malta, which makes its world premiere at SXSW, follows a woman named Mariana (Estefanía Piñeres) who is looking to get away from her life in Bogotá, Colombia and has become fixated on the island of Malta as somewhere she could be free from it all. Unfortunately for her, she’s not headed anywhere with any particular urgency…

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