TIFF 51: “The Debut” Explodes off the screen and into the Oscar race!

by Eurocheese

In Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut, heltered housewife Mona Friedman (Julianne Moore) is the only person who applies for a small role in her local community theater musical other than perennial starlet Serena Cherry (a lovely cameo from Bernadette Peters). When the diva drops out for a better part in Annie Get Your Gun, the grouchy director, Jerry (Paul Giamatti), is forced to cast Mona, much to his chagrin. The film’s trailer suggests a straightforward premise, and the audience assumes we know where it is headed. When Jerry decides to push Mona to test her limits to draw a better performance out of her, though, he breaks something in her. And then, the film is off to the races...

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TIFF 51: Full of sorrow and fury, “Elephants in the Fog” is a queer gem from Nepal

by Cláudio Alves

It starts at night, opening credits fading in and out over an abstract blackness that slowly gives way to something more discernible. Strange sounds seep from the dark, a cry that might be animal or human song. Gradually, it becomes some ritualistic beckoning for an elephant, somewhere in the forest. “Come to me,” a voice shouts into the nothing; lights slash across the empty screen, and a search party begins to make itself known in the frame. Such an opening could insinuate a film enmeshed in ancient mysteries to the point of alienation, removed from modernity and led by tradition into a magical place where the concerns of so-called “real life” matter little before the demands of ancient rite, folklore, and myth. 

But then it cuts to morning, and Elephants in the Fog suggests a narrative, thematic, and cinematic space that not only avoids these assumed extremes but also refutes the traditional vs modern binary this review’s first paragraph might have suggested. In the light of dawn, we meet our protagonist, Pirati, the matriarch of a Nepalese Kinnar community formed by those whom old tradition might recognize as a third-gendered other and less tradition-bound folk might call transgender, queer…

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TIFF 51: “Four Seasons in Java” is Kamila Andini’s most ambitious film to date

by Cláudio Alves

Over the last decade and change, Kamila Andini has become one of Indonesia's most acclaimed and internationally recognized filmmakers. Her debut, 2011’s The Mirror Never Lies, carried the pressure of paternal legacy, for Andini is the daughter of renowned director Garin Nugroho. Yet, the film’s promise of excellence was enough to supersede the legacy of blood and quiet any errant accusations of nepotism. More successes followed, including 2021’s Yuni, which represented Indonesia at the 94th Academy Awards, and 2022’s Before, Now and Then, which competed at the Berlinale and won Laura Basuki a deserved Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance. This year, her Four Seasons in Java had its world premiere at TIFF as a Centerpiece selection. 

Part revenge Western and part ghostly horror, part foray into magical realism and a piece of landscape poetry, a reflection on sexual violence against women and the insufficiencies of superficial progress, the film is hard to describe, much less categorize. There’s one thing about Four Seasons in Java of which there is no doubt, however. It is Andini’s most ambitious project yet…

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TIFF 51: Stephanie Ahn’s “Bedford Park” is an unrelenting actors’ showcase

by Cláudio Alves

Social realism is a preferred style for many directors in the American indie scene. However, one must be careful when indulging in its rawness, or else accusations of making misery porn may come about. There’s also the way such projects can devolve into something more akin to an acting exercise than a story proper, built upon and uniquely sustained by performers willing to portray degradation for the camera, breaking apart for our viewing pleasure if not our elucidation. Despite putative good intentions, Stephanie Ahn’s debut feature, Bedford Park, is a good example of these pitfalls, exploring the attrition cum companionship cum romance of two thirtysomething second-generation Korean-Americans played by Moon Choi and Son Sukku.

Her Audrey and his Eli go through it and then some in a diasporic bit of melodrama that, at times, feels like it’s aimlessly piling on misfortunes so that it can gawk at how its leads will articulate them through committed performances. Is there more to it? Hard to say…

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TIFF ’26: “Everything Else Is Noise” crowns Nicolás Pereda the Wavelengths king!

by Cláudio Alves

You may have noticed over the last few years of TIFF coverage that one particular section holds a special place in my heart. It’s the Wavelengths program, curated by Andréa Picard and committed to celebrating some of the most audacious works of cinema today. They are films that push boundaries and challenge, not just, or even primarily, through dramatic provocation, but by offering new ways of understanding the filmic form. Think of Gomes’ Grand Tour and Santos Arias’ Pepe and Koberidze’s Dry Leaf. Think of Nicolás Pereda’s Lázaro at Night and Copper. Indeed, the Mexican-Canadian auteur has become a section mainstay, something of a Wavelengths king that asserts his rule through seemingly simple, almost simplistic, exercises, where storytelling is depurated and elasticized, stretched betwixt off-screen and on-screen realities, apparent convention and quiet eccentricities.

The director’s latest, Everything Else Is Noise, fittingly starts with a sleight of hand that could only work as it does in this beloved seventh art of ours. Its modesty is quite disproportionate to how much it ended up fascinating me…

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