Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson reminisce about Sundance

by Murtada Elfadl

 

In the final part of the conversation I moderated between the actresses Zainab Jah (who will next be seen in Seacole) and Jayme Lawson (who will next be seen in The Batman), they talk about going to Sundance for the first time. They were there in January to premiere their film together Farewell Amor in which they play mother and daughter immigrants. With nostalgia for film festivals in full bloom, let's take a trip back to a happier time just a handful of months ago...

Click to read more ...

"Farewell Amor"

... one last Sundance review from Murtada Elfadl 

Early on in Farewell Amor, Angolan immigrant Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) sits down to eat with his wife Esther (Zainab Jah) and teenage daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson), they talk about all the years they spent apart. Walter moved to New York to escape the Civil War and was hoping to bring over Esther and Sylvia, yet they were stuck in Tanzania for seventeen years. That's a long time to be apart; Are they still a family or just three strangers trying to avoid the awkwardness of small talk?

It’s a moment of fraught emotions and stilted silence. Yet as Mwine, Jah and Lawson play it, it is also a moment of guarded release. The wait is over, there’s awkwardness, doubt and trepidation but also hope...

Click to read more ...

Murtada's Sundance Notes & Favorite Performances

by Murtada Elfadl

My second straight year at Sundance was even better than my first. I knew my way around a little bit more and managed not to over schedule myself. The movies remain for the most part fantastic and the conversations in the many lines and at the different spaces on Main Street illuminating. Here are a few observations about this year's festival:

the Zola team

Diversity of Voices and Stories Can Be Accomplished

I saw 30 movies in 8 days. Half of them were directed by women and half were cast with pre dominantently actors of color. Some of the best movies I saw came from outside the US...

Click to read more ...

Sundance Review: Promising Young Woman

by Murtada Elfadl

Carey Mulligan is an actress of immense range. Since her breakout at the 2009 edition of Sundance with An Education, she’s given us many tremendous performances. All of them heartbreaking and deeply felt in different ways, whether she’s a replicant trying to make human connections (Never Let Me Go), F Scott Fitzgerald’s famous Daisy (The Great Gatsby), a broken sister singing her heart out as a last cry for help (Shame) or a wife and mother facing the dissolution of her marriage and the paucity of choices after (Wildlife). And once again she gives an exceptional performance in Promising Young Woman.

This time she’s Cassie, who at 30 still lives home with her parents (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge), whiles her days away working in a coffee shop where even the boss (Laverene Cox) thinks the job is beneath her. Little by little we find out the reason for her apathy. An event that happened during college made her dropout and become a sorta avenger against “nice guys” who take advantage of vulnerable women...

Click to read more ...

LGBTQ Highlights from Sundance

Here's Ren Jender filing her final report from Sundance 2020...

Tabitha Jackson and Kirsten JohnsonSundance didn't have a big queer film this year, as they have in many previous years (most recently in 2018, when director Desiree Akhavan's The Miseducation of Cameron Post won the Grand Jury Dramatic Prize) but with this year's awards came the news that a black, queer woman, Tabitha Jackson, would take over from outgoing, longtime Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper. Jackson also made news on the first day of the festival when she married documentary director Kirsten Johnson (Johnson's Dick Johnson is Dead, was a favorite among many critics and audiences at Sundance this year), and they jointly announced that Johnson would no longer be submitting her films to the festival during her spouse's tenure. 

Sam Feder's Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen premiered on Monday. The film is a documentary in the tradition of The Celluloid Closet, which included clips of queer characters in films and commentary on those characters by writers, actors and filmmakers...

Click to read more ...