View All Posts By Tag: VIFF2024 -Reviews

This remarkable film by Min Bahadur Bham, director and co-author Abinash Bikram Shah, stunningly shot through the craft and skill of the most amazing cinematographer Aziz Zhambakiev, presents an iconic and transcendent story as old as The Ramayana’s tale of Rama and Sita. Entirely shot in the Himalaya Mountains, where the air is so thin only brush can grow. The attentive and thoughtful camerawork by Aziz Zhambakiev makes every scene

“All the world’s a stage….” and apparently, all worlds have stages.

The documentary, Grand Theft Hamlet, from Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls and Mark Oosterveen drops into the fictional world of Los Santos, a city in Rockstar’s online game Grand Theft Auto. (GTA). This is a flexible open world gaming platform, which allows for innovativeness and customization of the gamer’s individual goals and missions.
The overarching theme of the game

“Bao” has many meanings. One meaning is to protect and defend and another is return, revenge and reciprocity. Both underscore the motivations of the characters in this story.

This is the story of one man’s struggle to redeem his family’s honour and himself in order to restore balance in his life. Guan Hu (writer and director) sets the stage on which to play out this tale in a crumbling, decaying

This tantalizingly brief, playful and sensual portrait of a relationship is delightfully ambiguous and almost hallucinatory, flirting with the themes of subjective perception and of the passage of time. A young man who may be asleep on a train and dreaming, or who may be experiencing déja vu, says, “We sit on the train, watching the scenery, eating watermelon … What’s going wrong?” His teasing exchanges with his partner reflect

In “Sauna Day,” a group of men unwind in a sauna after a grueling workday, their conversation minimal. As the heat intensifies and the steam hisses, most of them leave, leaving only two behind. One of the men uses a bundle of herbs to strike the other’s back. The camera lingers, capturing the intensity and pleasure of this ritual, culminating in their immersion in a local stream, where they find

At its heart, Gloria! is a feel-good film. Strip away its 19th-century Venetian orphanage setting, and what remains is a familiar narrative: a group of teenagers uniting to overcome a corrupt system, a tyrannical leader, a male-dominated environment, and personal obstacles. Along the way, they discover their voices (one quite literally), gain creative and personal freedom, and even find love.
What sets Gloria! apart is its basis in truth.

In this affecting, meditative and timely drama, Ukrainian family members vacationing in Tenerife have their travel plans and their entire lives upended by Russia’s sudden invasion of their homeland. Blindsided, they experience a bewildering spectrum of emotions as their languorous holiday is converted into an intolerable state of limbo. Carnival festivities swirl around them; Russian tourists drink wine and enjoy the swimming pool while the family frantically seeks news —

Set against the backdrop of an ongoing occupation, No Other Land is a gripping documentary whose power lies in its simplicity, honesty, and unflinching realism. The film avoids any sense of manipulation or over-dramatization, delivering a genuine portrayal of life in Masafer Yatta, a region in the southern West Bank.
Masafer Yatta is home to 12 small villages where families live modest, cooperative lives, raising animals and farming the

The playful presentation of the opening credits signals the complex interweaving of art and life in this profoundly insightful film. At times, it is difficult to tease apart artifice and reality. The newlyweds portrayed in the first scene prove to be actors in a movie being shot in a reclusive artist’s home. She has reluctantly agreed to this intrusion into her private space because she needs the money generated by

Movie Title: Sleeping With A Tiger Foreign Title: Mit einem Tiger schlafen Year: 2024 Country: Austria Language: In German, English and French with English subtitles Directors: Anja Salomonowitz Awards: German Screen Actors Award 2024 Nominee DSP Award Best Leading Role (Beste Hauptrolle) Birgit Minichmayr A biopic, typically strives to capture the essence of a prominent figure’s life, highlighting the key moments that shaped their journey. However, sleeping with a Tiger,

Movie Title : When We lost To The Germans Foreign Film Title:Toen we van de Duitsers verloren Year: 2023 Country: Netherlands Language: In Dutch with English subtitles Directors: Guido van Driel Coming-of-age films can be challenging to watch and even more difficult to review. They often need to strike a delicate balance: tapping into universal emotions that resonate with audiences everywhere while also weaving in deeply personal narratives tied to

A finely observed portrait of late-in-life loneliness, longing and hope, this work is characterized by excellent photography and naturalistic pacing. Its poignant, humorous, and poetic tone is extremely appealing.

Seventy-year-old widow Mahin lives alone in Tehran. For the past thirty years, she has seemed resigned to her circumstances. Suddenly roused from her complacency, she asserts her compassionate spirit and newfound boldness both in a political incident into which she inserts

This animation is the story of a girl who seems to be lost. Suddenly, she is guided by three birds to a home whose owner is a bird-like mother and takes the girl in, to look after her. After the girl wakes up from a dream of a dead plant to three seeds in her hand, the three birds take the seeds and plant it for a new life to

Montaigne, in the 16th century, wrote that he would never fear death again. He was unconscious after he was thrown off his horse.

Filmakers, Henna Valky and Essu Lehtole, have interwoven animated visuals with first person narratives to illustrate, that whihch can not be described; near death experiences. Or, as Dr. Joseph Geraci states in the film “ encounters with death”.

The subjects represent a wide cross-section of ages, backgrounds