Photo by David Lee ©, courtesy of HBO and used with permission
We live in unimaginable times. And yet there were many who were able to foresee this future, this current new world, long before it happened. Among them, singer/songwriter/artist and all around renaissance man David Byrne, and the American national treasure that is Spike Lee.
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In their latest documentary ‘War and Wine’, filmmakers and world travelers Mark Johnston and Mark Ryan explore the world of winemaking in Lebanon. And in the process, they manage to show us perfectly the humanity, resilience and beauty of both the country and its people.
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Ali Suliman plays Mustafa, a father separated from his family by a wall, in Ameen Nayfeh’s ‘200 Meters’
A father, his family, a wall. It’s a theme, an image we think of often these days, particularly when speaking of certain American policies and our current US President. But where is another part of the world where such a policy has been tried and tested, and of course, failed miserably on a human scale? Palestine, or Israel if you wish to call it with its post-1948 name. A land belonging to many and claimed by some.
In Ameen Nayfeh’s quiet masterpiece ‘200 Meters’, which premiered as part of the Giornate degli Autori lineup in Venice this year, Palestinian superstar Ali Suliman plays Mustafa, a loving husband and doting father.
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Achintya Bose and Manish Chauhan in ‘Yeh Ballet’, image courtesy of Netflix
If you google the film ‘Yeh Ballet’ you’ll find that the Wikipedia short description reads like this: “Discovered by an eccentric ballet master, two gifted but underprivileged Mumbai teens face bigotry and disapproval as they pursue their dancing dreams.” And those sort of stories are always the best kind — yet Sooni Taraporevala’s film goes one step further. Or rather several beautiful, seamless dance steps further.
As someone who had fallen in love with Taraporevala’s heartfelt way of making films through her directorial debut ‘Little Zizou’ — a childhood story taking place in the Parsi community in South Bombay — ‘Yeh Ballet’ only intensified this cinematic love story.
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The Families for Freedom bus in London — a still from ‘Ayouni’
“Whenever you throw stones into the sea, it sends ripples through me.” — Dunya Mikhail
Bookended at its beginning and end by the stunning stanza from the esteemed Iraqi-American poet quoted above, the documentary ‘Ayouni’ proves both a heartbreaker and a dream maker of a film. Now let me explain.
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When I spent time in Paris with the late Richard Lormand, a film publicist whose passion for world cinema was a constant inspiration to those who knew him, he spoke often about “Farooki” and his 2017 film ‘No Bed of Roses’. Richard had represented the Bangladeshi filmmaker’s previous work in festivals and was really saddened that his latest wasn’t featured in Venice. It starred Irrfan Khan, whom we both adored and had seen in Locarno the year before. Whenever Richard spoke of a film, it turned into something magical and I could not rest until I had watched it.
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Ziad Bakri and Maria Zreik in Zain Duraie’s ‘Give Up the Ghost’
One of the hottest button issues for a modern woman concerns her ability to have a child. Depending on which society you are born into, it ranges from being a duty to a God-given right, with all shades of grey in between.
In her haunting, beautifully shot (by Benoît Chamaillard) and perfectly sound designed (by Israel Bañuelos) short film ‘Give Up the Ghost’, Jordanian filmmaker Zain Duraie explores the consequences on a marriage around the ability or inability to have a child.
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Actress Lyna Khoudri in a still from 'Papicha' by Mounia Meddour
I believe that if there were more women film critics, the business of cinema would be much different. There would be better films made, more communication between what audiences want and filmmakers create, and those projects which portray the truth of our humanity would receive the attention they deserve. 'Papicha' by Mounia Meddour would be one of those projects. Now let me explain what I mean.
‘Papicha’ is now streaming as part of the Virtual Cinema of Film at Lincoln Center, through June 4th. An act of courage if you read my piece!
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The discovery of Farah Nabulsi’s stunning, honest and beautiful film ‘The Present’ I owe to Palestinian favorite actor Saleh Bakri. I mean, as soon as I saw his name on the Brooklyn Film Festival line-up page, I was hooked. But while his presence is undeniably a wonderful pull into the film, Nabulsi’s perfect oeuvre stands on its own.
The title ‘The Present’ could refer to a gift, the one Yusuf, Bakri’s character goes to buy for his wife on their wedding anniversary. But it also means, to me, the current state of affairs, the here and now, for the Palestinian people.
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Antshi von Moos’s debut documentary short ‘Brother, Move On’ is one of those unmissable films which possesses the right appeal, even on paper. The story of a Delhi woman who drives a taxi at night, catering to an all-female clientele to make sure they get home safely, made up the perfect storm of place, leading character and premise to secure I’d yearn to watch it. That it is a real story, told with kindness and a deep understanding of the subject matter at hand, is just icing on the cake.
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Shince and Fernando in a still from ‘This Is Not Cricket’ by Jacopo de Bertoldi
I found my love for cricket within an Italian filmmaker’s documentary that has little to do with the game and much more with humanity’s place within it. Well, the film is called ‘This Is Not Cricket’ after all, and the filmmaker is wonderfully fresh voice in documentary, Jacopo de Bertoldi. A man with whom every conversation turns into an explanation of life.
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Sasha as a young boy in a moment from ‘Rewind’
We can all go back to a moment in our childhood or young adult life when we realized the world was a difficult and ugly place. Some of us discovered it when we were let down by our first love, or when a parent showed his true colors by raising his/her hands to us or maybe when a friend betrayed us and our secret.
For Sasha Joseph Neulinger that moment came on early and painfully strong.
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The title shot of Zeina Sfeir’s film
The five filmmakers featured in this omnibus of shorts, featuring life in the ghost town and home shelters of Beirut, are the brightest of the new wave of directors from Lebanon.
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I was always a huge fan of the CBS news show 60 Minutes. To this day, there are some indelible segments that have stayed with me, like the Mike Wallace interview with tobacco industry insider Jeffrey Wigand and the Dan Rather expose on George W. Bush and how the 43rd President of the United States of America came to be in the Air National Guard during the time of the Vietnam War.
Incidentally, both those segments have been made into films and these days 60 Minutes continues to be a trailblazer in US news reporting, with an analytical twist, though perhaps today they do what they do with a bit more caution.
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Josef Hader as Stefan Zweig
Long before signing on to direct ‘Unorthodox’ on Netflix, Maria Schrader made another beautiful film about a Jewish figure, Stefan Zweig. I interviewed her in 2016 as she was nominated to represent Austria as the country’s Academy Award’s entry. I wanted to revisit that interview and my love for her work. The interview and my own thoughts about the film are as current today as they could ever be. Just read on.
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In a world where most of us compete to be noticed, Benedetta Barzini wants to disappear. But before the former model, slash journalist, slash women’s rights activist goes quietly into that horizon rowing her wooden boat, or climbing through the woods backpack in tow, her son Beniamino Barrese wants to film her for all to see. And to remember her always. Or, as he says off camera at the start of his stunning documentary ‘The Disappearance of My Mother’ — “I was not ready to let her go.”
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Where were you in 1997? Well, that was more than 20 years ago, some may have just been born, others living their day-to-day life and chances are you can’t remember that year at all. I know I can’t. And yet that was the beginning of the end of the Arab world as we know it, and the start of the diplomatic chaos we find ourselves in these days, throughout the globe.
In his latest film ‘Curveball’, Johannes Naber does what he does best, tell a story inspired by the headlines yet in a narrative and human way. With humor and great insight thrown in.
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One of my favorite films in Berlin this year is not in Competition. Actually it’s not even in any of the sidebars. You’ll find Najwa Najjar’s stunning, heartwarming latest feature at the Berlinale’s European Film Market, with a screening on the 22nd of February, at 9.30 in the Simon Bolivar Saal.
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To me, Lynne Sachs’ ‘Film About a Father Who’ is simply a masterpiece. And quite clearly, Sachs is someone whose own issues with her father have turned her into a phenomenal woman — full of creativity and courage.
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Sadaf Asgari as Maryam in a still from ‘Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness’
There are so many threads, themes and ideas bursting through Massoud Bakhshi’s stunning ‘Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness’ that it would take a book and not a short article to discuss them all. But within the limits of this piece, I’d like to start off by saying that the film absolutely deserved to win the World Cinema Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance, where it premiered.
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