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First New Directors/New Films 2019 reviews:
BAIT (Mark Jenkin 2019).
Hand-developed Bolex 16mm. UK feature debut defense of Cornish fishermen against gentrification. If the editing gets your goat, you might still like the antiqued box-format B&W look. From the @berlinale.
Showtimes: March 29 - 6:30 PM; March 30 - 12:45 PM
PRESENT. PERFECT. (Shengze Zhu 2019).
A two-hour-plus documentary of a limited aspect of live-streaming in China. Empowerment and "Fame" of a sort for the lost and talent-less millions. You know. The internet.
Showtimes: March 30 - 5:30 PM; March 31 - 12:00 PM
MS SLAVIC 7 (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Deragh Campbell (2019).
From Canada, an intellectual drama based on personal experience about poetic Polish ancestors and jealous aunts. Some nice raw material here for a drama about document analysis, snail mail, love.
Showtimes: March 30 - 8:30 PM;April 1 - 6:30 PM
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-13-2019 at 06:09 PM.
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Links to three more reviews of coming New Directors/New Films features.
MONOS (Alejandro Landes 2018)
From 38-year0old Brazilian-born Alejandro Landes, a stunning, totally involving story of teenage soldiers run amok in a remote mountain and jungle region of South America. like a mashup of Apocalypse Now and Lord of the Flies. It also made me think of Carlos Reygadas and Lisandro Alonso.
Showtimes: March 30, 6:00 PM; March 31, 6:00 PM
MANTA RAY/KRABEN RAHU (Phuttiphong Aroonpheng 2018)
A many-layered, haunting debut from the Thai cinematographer turned director about a fisherman of dubious background who rescues a starving, half-dead and mute Royhinga refugee from a mangrove swamp.
Showtimes: March 29,9:00 PM; March 30, 3:15 PM
END OF THE CENTURY/FIN DE SIGLO (Lucio Castro 2019)
Two gay men from Argentina meet and hook up in Barcelona. Then it turns out they did this twenty years ago. Or more. World Premiere.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-13-2019 at 06:08 PM.
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CLEMENCY (Chinonye Chokwu 2019)
Likely to be the most mainstream-known of this year's series, this one provides a powerhouse performance by Else Woodard as the warden of a prison where she has too often had to oversee executions by lethal injection and the latest one looks like it will finish her. Dramatizes the immense burden the death penalty imposes on everyone.
GENESIS/GENÈSE (Philippe Lesage 2018)
Continuation of the French Canadian director's autobiographical recreation of his youth, moving on to adolescence and first efforts at romance Suffers from too much diffuseness (is it really about anybody?) but has a star in the already experienced and very confident Théodore Pellerin.
BELONGING/AIDIYET (Burak Çevek: 2019)
Conceptual Turksh noir begins with the dry description of the amateurish, half-botched murder of a young woman's parents and morphs into her first romantic evening and nice Turkish morning after breakfast with her future husband and accomplice.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-19-2019 at 05:30 PM.
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ANGELO (Markus Schleinzer 2018)
Based on a real person, the story of an African slave who becomes an exotic pet of the Hapsburg Court in 18th-century Austria. Beautiful and very weird, by the casting director of Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl, who follows the same austere school, and whose first film was about a pedophile.
FAUSTO (Andrea Bussmann 2018)
Bussmann blends philosophy, the occult, and folklore in a series of stories or interviews, often at night, along the Oaxaca coast of Mexico
HONEYLAND (Tamara Kotovsk, Ljubomir Stefanov 2018)
HONEYLAND/ Медена Земја is a three-year observational documentary about an unmarried woman in rural Macedonia whose wild honey raising is spoiled by new neighbors. A simple but rich tale.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-19-2019 at 07:21 PM.
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MIDNIGHT FAMLY (Luke Lorentzen 2019)
Another high-profile item of the New Directors series, winner of the Sundance Documentary Cinematography award for its striking images of the Ochoas, who man a private ambulance in Mexico City. There are only 45 municipal ambulances for over nine million people, so the private, not exactly legal ones try to make money filling the gap. It ain't easy. An exciting, sad, and highly entertaining film. Lorentzen worked alone in the vehicle with the team on many long nights, shot alone with two cameras, and did his own editing. He's young.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 12-09-2019 at 11:16 PM.
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THE LOAD/TERET (Ognjen Glavonić 2018)
A man drives a mysterious truckload during the Kosovo bombing, 1999, hinting at moral complicity in an atrocity. Relentlessly unfun but intelligent, handsomely crafted, and with glimmers of hope from a new generation. But the conceit seems heavy-handed despite the well-crafted minimalism. Feature debut; he made a doc about the actual atrocity.
Now showing in France. AlloCiné 3.0 (not fabulous).
New Directors/New Films showtimes:
April 3, 8:45 PM; April 4, 6:30 PM
U.S. Premiere · Q&As with Ognjen Glavonić on April 3 & 4
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-20-2019 at 03:32 PM.
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TEMPORADA/LONG WAY HOME (André Novais Oliveira 2018).
A middle-aged woman of color moves away for a new job in suburban Brazil and patiently makes her way. A triumph of the quotidian. A remarkable little film that embodies many of the qualities of small indie Latin American films but has a quality of its own.
ND/NF Showtimes; March 31, 3:15 PM; April 2, 8:45 PM
New York Premiere · Q&As with André Novais Oliveira on March 31 & April 2
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