NYFF '24: "Suburban Fury" tells the tall tale of a wannabee Presidential Assassin

by Cláudio Alves

On September 22nd, 1975, just seventeen days after Squeaky Fromme had attempted the same, Sara Jane Moore fired at President Gerald Ford. Neither of the 45-year-old woman's shots hit their target, though she came dangerously close. Had Moore noticed the sight on her revolver was 6 inches misplaced, she might have done it. Such violent actions came less than two years after this housewife from the San Francisco suburbs had been recruited by the FBI as an informant, going into militant groups and becoming radicalized in the process. Her thwarted presidential assassination led to much media hullabaloo, pithy dismissals of Moore as being "off her mind," and a life sentence, of which she served 32 years.

Nearly half a century after the shooting, director Robinson Devor puts her at the center of Suburban Fury, a new documentary where the would-be assassin is given ample opportunity to tell her own story…

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NYFF '24: "Afternoons of Solitude" is a Barbaric Beauty

by Cláudio Alves

When I was very young, I remember being besotted by bullfighting. Around where I grew up, the so-called art of the "tourada" was fundamental to the local culture, a noble practice to be celebrated. My parents were a tad horrified by my interest, and I was an ignorant child. For some reason, I had never realized what was happening in the arena, too blinded by the matador's glamorous figure, the dance-like spectacle, and the thunderous applause. But seeing it live and then watching TV recordings, I realized something. What I thought were theatrical tricks and mud were actual violence and blood splatter. Back then, I dreamed of being a vet, so the thought of all that animal pain made me feel nothing but revulsion for what I once found beautiful.

I was reminded of this while watching Albert Serra's Afternoons of Solitude, a documentary on Peruvian-born "torero" Andrés Roca Rey which earned the Catalan director the biggest prize at this year's San Sebastián Film Festival. For once, I saw some of the beauty again, along with the brutality and the horror. I felt tears in my eyes and nausea erupt from within. Quite the cinematic experience…

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And So It Begins: Oscars, Politics, and the Philippines

By Juan Carlos Ojano

Photo: Cine Diaz

Much has been said about how political the submission process for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars is. That assumption is fair. To quickly summarize the submission process, countries must form a nominating body - approved by their respective governments - that the Academy will then consider. These bodies will be in charge of selecting which films will represent the countries in contention for the award. This season, you have a contender like The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Iran didn’t submit it, director Mohammad Rasoulof is in conflict with the government and escaped the country, so Germany submitted it instead) and All We Imagine as Light (India didn’t submit it, director Payal Kapadia is outspokenly critical of the government) as proof of how contentious and political this process is. Make no mistake: everything about the Oscars is political. 

But if there is a film with a fascinating narrative entering this category, it’s the Philippines’ official submission: Ramona S. Díaz’s And So It Begins...

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NYFF '24: Mati Diop tells a ghost story in “Dahomey”

by Cláudio Alves

In a territory located within present-day Benin, there once was the Kingdom of Dahomey, which prospered from the early 17th to near the dawn of the 20th century. Around the mid-1800s, the kingdom became the focus of European imperial forces after a couple centuries as a supplier of enslaved people to the Atlantic slave trade. First came the British and then the French. The Franco-Dahomean wars led to its fracturing, a colonial schism that resulted in the kingdom's annexation into French West Africa. In 1892, when European forces invaded, thousands of treasures and historical artifacts were taken from the royal palace. For decades, they have resided in French museums despite many Beninese calls for their return. By 2021, the two nations reached an agreement.

Out of the estimated 7,000 objects, 26 pieces were shipped from the Musée du quai Branly to Cotonou, in Benin. Mati Diop's Dahomey details this journey, its cultural significance and context within the decolonization process. This year's Gold Berlin Bear winner considers all of it in a swift 68 minutes, embracing documentary techniques while combining them with a touch of poetry, perchance a phantasm…

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TIFF '24: A Dozen Capsules and Final Farewells

by Cláudio Alves

PERFUMED WITH MINT was one of many gems in TIFF's Wavelengths section.

At long last, let's close this seemingly unending TIFF coverage, so that The Film Experience can move on to some NYFF reviews, maybe even some peeks into the Lisbon festival scene. Still, before bidding Toronto adieu, a dozen titles need assessment, even if it's through a cornucopia of capsule reviews, plus a personal top ten to close things off properly. Spread out through five different festival sections and four continents, these twelve final films span from the experimental to the conventional, from dreamy stylization to dry dreary realism. There are beautiful sights to appreciate and performances, too, including a pair of wildly different characterizations from Chilean actress Paulina García. 

To open the belated farewell, I propose a look at my favorite TIFF section – Wavelengths. Within its radical offerings, one can find pictures that look like none other, such unique visions as Muhammad Hamdy's Perfumed with Mint and Jessica Sarah Rinland's Collective Monologue…

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