Festivals – Page 2 – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THE ROYAL HOTEL (TIFF 2023) – Review by Emma Badame

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 Emma Badame australian films, Hotel Coolgardie, Jessica Henwick, julia garner, kitty green, Michael Latham, Oscar Redding, The Royal Hotel, TIFF 2023

Australian director Kitty Green’s second narrative feature The Royal Hotel is a wholly unnerving and totally engrossing thriller. Atmospheric and all too realistic, it’s the kind of story that sticks with you long after the credits have rolled. The film is paced to perfection and each and every well-planned element is woven expertly together to build layers upon layers of truly discomforting suspense. With Green’s keen eye the film becomes a riveting exploration of isolation and what it truly feels like to be a young woman in the world. It helps too that Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick nail their characters.

Festivals Interviews

KITTY GREEN on THE ROYAL HOTEL (TIFF 2023) – Liz Braun interviews

September 18, 2023September 22, 2023 Liz Braun australian films, Hotel Coolgardie, Jessica Henwick, julia garner, kitty green, Michael Latham, Oscar Redding, The Royal Hotel, TIFF 2023

Australian filmmaker Kitty Green delves into the war between men and women in The Royal Hotel, a film about two young backpackers who take barmaid jobs in a mining area in Australia’s isolated outback. How they fare in an environment drenched in testosterone and alcohol is an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller about gender dynamics. Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick star in The Royal Hotel as the tourists who take pub jobs to top up their holiday fund. The Royal Hotel is about systemic issues, says Green, “about drinking culture and women feeling threatened in certain spaces.

Festivals Reviews

IN THE REARVIEW (TIFF 2023) – Review by Leslie Combemale

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 Leslie Combemale documentary, In the Rearview, Maciek Hamela, TIFF 2023, ukraine

In the Rearview is aptly named. It’s a documentary in which the camera sits inside a car, driving in Ukraine evacuating people from their homes. That’s the entire movie. Does it sound boring or repetitive? It’s anything but. What this film does, is it reveals the dangers, horrors, and tragedy of war in a way that nothing else could, and in so doing is an essential document of this moment in history. In the Rearview is a powerful act of protest, done via filmmaking.

Festivals Reviews

WIDOW CLICQUOT (TIFF 2023) – Review by Kat Sachs

September 18, 2023September 22, 2023 Kat Sachs Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, Caroline Champetier, Haley Bennet, Sam Riley, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It, Thomas Napper, TIFF 2023, Tom Sturridge, Veuve Clicquot, Widow Clicquot

To be frank, a sexy period drama about the life, love and labor of one Widow Clicquot sounds like the stuff of a Drunk History sketch, in no small part because it centers on champagne production. Surprisingly, then, Widow Clicquot is a compelling and sleekly executed endeavor, as intriguing as it is sometimes platitudinous.

Festivals Reviews

THE PEASANTS (TIFF 2023) – Review by Leslie Combemale

September 18, 2023September 21, 2023 Leslie Combemale Dorota Kobiela Welchman, hugh welchman, loving vincent, Painting Animation Work Stations, PAWS units, The Peasants, TIFF 2023, Wladyslaw Reymont, Young Poland movement

This is the second animated feature by directing wife and husband team Dorota Kobiela Welchman and Hugh Welchman after their Oscar-nominated success Loving Vincent. Based on a novel of the same name by Nobel lauriate Wladyslaw Reymont, it features the technique created by the company for Loving Vincent. Using painting animators working on specially designed PAWS units (Painting Animation Work Stations), live action footage is used to create oil paintings, which make up the finished imagery seen in the film.

Festivals Interviews

DK and Hugh Welchman on THE PEASANTS (TIFF 2023) – Leslie Combemale interviews

There’s a new animated feature from writer/director wife and husband team Dorota Kobiela (DK) and Hugh Welchman known for the Oscar-nominated film Loving Vincent, called The Peasants. It’s based on a novel of the same name by Polish 1924 Nobel laureate Wladyslaw Reymont, a thousand-page tome so well-known in Poland that it’s taught in schools, and considered one of the classics of world literature. Created in the same style as Loving Vincent, The Peasants was filmed in a technique in which live action is shot, and then used as reference and interpreted through oil paintings, each created by hand at four studios in Poland, Serbia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Those oil paintings then are shot and become the images seen as the finished film. Women made up 75 to 80% of the artists working on the film.

Festivals Interviews

Justine Triet on ANATOMY OF A FALL (TIFF 2023) – Liz Braun Interviews

September 18, 2023September 22, 2023 Liz Braun Anatomy of a Fall, Arthur Harari, Justin Triet, Samuel Theis, Sandra Hüller, TIFF 2023

Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall is a riveting courtroom drama about guilt and innocence and what’s involved in trying to get at the truth. It’s a decidedly feminist film, and the beauty of its construction is an exquisite ambiguity that never falters. Triet said that viewers of the movie draw their own conclusion as to whether Huller’s character is guilty or innocent.

Festivals Reviews

FLIPSIDE (TIFF 2023) – Review by Peg Aloi

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 Peg Aloi Chris Wilcha, documentary, Flipside, Herman Leonard, TIFF 2023

Milcha struggles to reckon with having abandoned the project and with the trajectory of his creative life. Helped along by the subjects of his unfinished films, and utilizing an astonishing array of black and white imagery that veers from the pedestrian to the sublime, from dark to whimsical, Milcha explores what it means to live an artistic life that repeatedly falls short of his dreams. He probes, often with irony and self-deprecating humor, the connections between ambition and motivation, desire and creativity, and the inescapable existential dread that accompanies the realization that time has passed faster than we could have believed possible.

Festivals Reviews

FAIR PLAY (TIFF 2023) – Review by Karen Gordon

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 Karen Gordon alden ehrenreich, Chloe Domont, eddie marsan, Fair Play, Phoebe Dynevor, TIFF 2023

Chloe Domont makes a fantastic feature film debut with Fair Play, a taut film that moves from drama to comedy to horror and back to drama as in it’s depiction of gender power dynamics both in relationships, and in the workplace. The film is set in the pressure cooker of a hedge fund company, Anyone who has found themselves on the losing side of a work situation will relate to what’s going on. While the gender issue is central here, the film doesn’t tip into something too simplistic.

Festivals Reviews

GONZO GIRL (TIFF 2023) – Review by Leslie Combemale

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 Leslie Combemale Camila Morrone, Cheryl Della Pietra, gonzo girl, Hunter S. Thompson, Patricia Arquette, TIFF 2023, willem dafoe

As a directorial debut, Patricia Arquette could have done a lot worse than Gonzo Girl. Based on the book about the experiences of Cheryl Della Pietra’s as Hunter S. Thompson’s assistant in the mid-nineties, Arquette was the perfect age to understand the challenges of a women in the business world of the time. Arquette shows a facility with interesting shots and choosing below-the-line artists who will give life to a film’s vision, and choosing performers who will click, and make the best of their lines. She’ll do well in the future with a better script. She already knows how to bring out the best out of good actors working together.