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: 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: A Mohammad Rasoulof Double Feature

by Cláudio Alves

THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

Much of the period leading up to this year's Cannes Film Festival was consumed with news of Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. Always outspoken against an oppressive regime, his career has been dedicated to political art commenting on present injustices through the prism of fiction. For this, he has been arrested multiple times, and his latest feature, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, proved too much for the Iranian authorities. Police hounded many people involved with the production, Cannes organizers were pressured to drop the official competition title, and Rasoulof himself was put behind bars, convicted to eight years in prison and an additional filmmaking ban. Thankfully, before celebrations started at the Croisette, the cineaste managed an escape to a safe house in Germany, the same country that now takes Sacred Fig to the Oscars as its official submission.

At TIFF, two works with screenplays signed by the Iranian political dissident were screened. There was the eponymous Cannes prize-winner and Seven Days, directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi…

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Hail Satan and Holy Blasphemy: An Olympian Watchlist

by Cláudio Alves

Christian conservatives worldwide seem to have had their outrage activated by the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony. The French Revolution pageantry has been decried as satanic, but even more religious nuts are losing their mind over a tableau starring drag queens in a pose that could remind one of Da Vinci's Last Supper. According to the ceremony's artistic director, Thomas Jolly, the image was in reference to and reverence of a painting. But it was no piece of Catholic iconography, rather The Feast of the Gods by Jan van Bijlert, a depiction of the Olympians with Bacchus in the front.

Still, even if Jolly had re-imagined the Last Supper with queer performers, why would that be an insult instead of a celebration? Appeals to religious decorum are mere smokescreens, hiding hatred and trying to give it a justification. In response to such culture war odiousness, I can think of no better response than a provocation in the form of a list – here at TFE, we are known list-o-maniacs, after all. If you yearn to be offended by blasphemous media, satanic sensations, and some glorious filth, here are thirteen flicks to scratch that itch…

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More news about Mohammad Rasoulof

by Cláudio Alves

THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (2024)

Last Friday, among a torrent of festival-related news, the fate of Mohammad Rasoulof was a topic of discussion. The Iranian filmmaker has found himself in trouble with his country's law for many years now, primarily because of political outspokenness and a cinematic output that dares to question the status quo. His latest work, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, is scheduled for a Cannes premiere next week, as part of the Main Competition. Though details are scant, it's been reported as the story of a paranoid judge of the Revolutionary Court. When, in a setting of civic unrest, his gun vanishes, the man imposes oppressive rules on his family, turning the domestic space into a tyranny, his wife and daughters into quasi-prisoners…

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