New York Film Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

BONG JOON-HO: PARASITE 기생충 (Gisaengchung) (2019)


LEE SON-KYUN AND JO YEO-JEONG IN PARASITE

Crime thriller as social commentary? Maybe not.

I've reviewed Bong's 2006 The Host ("a monster movie with a populist heart and political overtones that's great fun to watch") and his 2009 Mother which I commented had "too many surprises." (I also reviewed his 2013 Snowpiercer.) Nothing is different here except this seems to be being taken more seriously as social commentary, though it's primarily an elaborately plotted and cunningly realized violent triller, as well a monster movie where the monsters are human. It's also marred by being over long and over-plotted, making its high praise seem a bit excessive.

This new film, Bong's first in a while made at home and playing with national social issues, is about a deceitful poor family that infiltrates a rich one. It won the top award at Cannes in May 2019, just a year after the Japanese Koreeda's (more subtle and more humanistic) Palm winner about the related theme of a crooked poor family. Parasite has led to different comparisons, such as Losey's The Servant and Pasolini's Theorem. In accepting the prize, Bong himself gave a nod to Hitchcock and Chabrol. Parasite has met with nearly universal acclaim, though some critics feel it is longer and more complicated than necessary and crude in its social commentary, if its contrasting families really adds up to that. The film is brilliantly done and exquisitely entertaining half the way. Then it runs on too long and acquires an unwieldiness that makes it surprisingly flawed for a film so heaped with praise.

It's strange to compare Parasite with Losey's The Servant, in which Dick Bogarde and James Fox deliver immensely rich performances. Losey's film is a thrillingly slow-burn, subtle depiction of class interpenetration, really a psychological study that works with class, not a pointed statement about class itself. It's impossible to speak of The Servant and Parasite in the same breath.

In Parasite one can't help but enjoy the ultra-rich family's museum-piece modernist house, the score, and the way the actors are handled, but one keeps coming back to the fact that as Steven Dalton simply puts it in his Cannes Hollywood Reporter review, Parasite is "cumbersomely plotted" and "heavy-handed in its social commentary." Yet I had to go to that extremist and contrarian Armond White in National Review for a real voice of dissent. I don't agree with White's politics or his belief that Stephen Chow is a master filmmaker, but I do sympathize with being out-of-tune, like him, with all the praise of Boon's new film.

The contrast between the poor and rich family is blunt indeed, but the posh Park family doesn't seem unsubtly depicted: they're absurdly overprivileged, but don't come off as bad people. Note the con-artist Kim family's acknowledgement of this, and the mother's claim that being rich allows you to be nice, that money is like an iron that smooths out the wrinkles. This doesn't seem to be about that, mainly. It's an ingeniously twisted story of a dangerous game, and a very wicked one. Planting panties in the car to mark the chauffeur as a sexual miscreant and get him fired: not nice. Stimulating the existing housekeeper's allergy and then claiming she has TB so she'll be asked to leave: dirty pool. Not to mention before that, bringing in the sister as somebody else's highly trained art therapist relative, when all the documents are forged and the "expertise" is cribbed off the internet: standard con artistry.

The point is that the whole Kim family makes its way into the Park family's employ and intimate lives, but it is essential that they conceal that they are in any way related to each other. What Bong and his co-writer Jin Won Han are after is the depiction of a dangerous con game, motivated by poverty and greed, that titillates us with the growing risk of exposure. The film's scene-setting of the house and family is exquisite. The extraordinary house is allowed to do most of the talking. The rich family and the housekeeper are sketched in with a few deft stokes. One's only problem is first, the notion that this embodies socioeconomic commentary, and second, the overreach of the way the situation is played out, with one unnecessary coda after another till every possibility is exhausted. This is watchable and entertaining (till it's not), but it's not the stuff of a top award.

Parasite 기생충 (Gisaengchung), 132 mins., debuted in Competition at Cannes, winning the Palme d'Or best picture award. Twenty-eight other festivals followed as listed on IMDb, including New York, for which it was screened (at IFC Center Oct. 11, 2019) for the present review. Current Metascore 95%. It has opened in various countries including France, where the AlloCiné press rating soared to 4.8.


PARK SO-DAM AND CHOI WOO-SIK IN PARASITE

[Chris Knipp]

EDWARD NORTON: MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (2019)


GUGU MBATHA-RAW AND EDWARD NORTON IN MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN

Edward Norton's passion project complicates the Jonathan Lethem novel

The NYFF Closing Night film is the premiere of Edwards Norton's adaptation, a triumph over many creative obstacles through a nine-year development time, of Jonathan Lethem's 1999 eponymous novel. It concerns Lionel Essrog (played by Norton), a man with Tourette's Syndrome who gets entangled in a police investigation using the obsessive and retentive mind that comes with his condition to solve the mystery. Much of the film, especially the first half, is dominated by Lionel's jerky motions and odd repetitive outbursts, for which he continually apologizes. Strange hero, but Lethem's creation. To go with the novel's evocation of Maltese Falcon style noir flavor, Norton has recast it from modern times to the Fifties.

Leading cast members, besides Norton himself, are Willem Dafoe, Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Cherry Jones, Bobby Cannavale and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. In his recasting of the novel, as Peter Debruge explains in his Variety review, Norton makes as much use of Robert Caro's The Power Broker, about the manipulative city planner Robert Moses, a "visionary" insensitive to minorities and the poor, as of Lethem's book. Alec Baldwn's "Moses Randolph" role represents the film's Robert Moses character, who is added into the world of the original novel.

Some of the plot line may become obscure in the alternating sources of the film. But clearly Lionel Essrog, whose nervous sensibility hovers over things in Norton's voiceover, is a handicapped man with an extra ability who's one of four orphans from Saint Vincent's Orphanage in Brooklyn saved by Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), who runs a detective agency. When Minna is offed by the Mob in the opening minutes of the movie, Lionel goes chasing. Then he learns city bosses had a hand, and want to repress his efforts.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw's character, Laura Rose, who becomes a kind of love interest for Lionel Essrog, and likewise willem Dafoe's, Paul Randolph, Moses' brother and opponent, are additional key characters in the film not in the Johathan Lethem book. The cinematography is by the Mike Leigh regular (who produced the exquisite Turner), Dick Pope. He provides a lush, classic look.

Viewers will have to decide if this mixture of novel, non-fiction book and period recasting works for them or not. For many the problem is inherent in the Lethem novel, that it's a detective story where, as the original Times reviewer Albert Mobilio said, "solving the crime is beside the point." Certainly Norton has created a rich mixture, and this is a "labour of love," "as loving as it is laborious, maybe," is how the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw put it, writing (generally quite favorably) from Toronto. In her intro piece for the first part of the New York Film Festival for the Times Manohla Dargis linked it with the difficult Albert Serra'S Liberté with a one-word reaction: "oof," though she complemented these two as "choices rather than just opportunistically checked boxes." Motherless Brooklyn has many reasons for wanting to be in the New York Film Festival, and for the honor of Closing Night Film, notably the personal passion, but also the persistent rootedness in New York itself through these permutations.

Motherless Brooklyn, 144 mins., debuted at Telluride Aug. 30, 2019, showing at eight other festivals including Toronto, Vancouver, Mill Valley, and New York, where it was screened at the NYFF OCT. 11, 2019 as the Closing Night film. It opens theatrically in the US Nov. 1, 2019. Current Metascore 60%.

[Chris Knipp]

[Found also in Filmleaf's Festival Coverage section for the 2019 NYFF]

MARTIN SCORSESE: THE IRISHMAN (2019)


AL PACINO AND ROBERT DE NIRO IN THE IRISHMAN

Old song

From Martin Scorsese, who is in his late seventies, comes a major feature that is an old man's film. It's told by an old man, about old men, with old actors digitized (indifferently) to look like and play their younger selves as well. It's logical that The Irishman, about Teamsters loyalist and mob hit man Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who became the bodyguard and then (as he tells it) the assassin of Union kingpin Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) should have been chosen as Opening Night Film of the New York Film Festival. Scorsese is very New York, even if the film is set in Detroit. He is also a good friend of Film at Lincoln Center. And a great American director with an impressive body of work behind him.

To be honest, I am not a fan of Scorsese's feature films. I do not like them. They are unpleasant, humorless, laborious and cold. I admire his responsible passion for cinema and incestuous knowledge of it. I do like his documentaries. From Fran Lebowitz's talk about the one he made about her, I understand what a meticulous, obsessive craftsman he is in all his work. He also does have a sense of humor. See how he enjoys Fran's New York wit in Public Speaking. And there is much deadpan humor in The Irishman at the expense of the dimwitted, uncultured gangsters it depicts. Screenwriter Steven Zaillian's script based on Charles Brandt's book about Sheeran concocts numerous droll deadpan exchanges. It's a treat belatedly to see De Niro and Pacino acting together for the first time in extended scenes.

The Irishman is finely crafted and full of ideas and inspires many thoughts. But I found it monotonous and overlong - and frankly overrated. American film critics are loyal. Scorsese is an icon, and they feel obligated, I must assume, to worship it. He has made a big new film in his classic gangster vein, so it must be great. The Metascore, 94%, nonetheless is an astonishment. Review aggregating is not a science, but the makers of these scores seem to have tipped the scales. At least I hope more critics have found fault with The Irishman than that. They assign 80% ratings to some reviews that find serious fault, and supply only one negative one (Austin Chronicle, Richard Whittaker). Of course Armond White trashes the movie magnificently in National Review ("Déjà Vu Gangsterism"), but that's outside the mainstream mediocre media pale.

Other Scorsese stars join De Niro and Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel. This is a movie of old, ugly men. Even in meticulously staged crowd scenes, there is not one young or handsome face. Women are not a factor, not remotely featured as in Jonathan Demme's delightful Married to the Mob. There are two wives often seen, in the middle distance, made up and coiffed to the kitsch nines, in expensive pants suits, taking a cigarette break on car trips - it's a thing. But they don't come forward as characters. Note also that out of loyalty to his regulars, Scorsese uses an Italo-American actor to play an Irish-American. There's a far-fetched explanation of Frank's knowledge of Italian, but his Irishness doesn't emerge - just another indication of how monochromatic this movie is.

It's a movie though, ready to serve a loyal audience with ritual storytelling and violence, providing pleasures in its $140 million worth of production values in period feel, costumes, and snazzy old cars (though I still long for a period movie whose vehicles aren't all intact and shiny). This is not just a remake. Its very relentlessness in showing Frank's steady increments of slow progress up the second-tier Teamsters and mafia outsider functionary ladders is something new. But it reflects Scorsese's old worship of toughs and wise guys and seeming admiration for their violence.

I balk at Scorsese's representing union goons and gangsters as somehow heroic and tragic. Metacritic's only critic of the film, Richard Whittiker of the Austen Chronicle, seems alone in recognizing that this is not inevitable. He points out that while not "lionizing" mobsters, Scorsese still "romanticizes" them as "flawed yet still glamorous, undone by their own hubris." Whittiker - apparently alone in this - compares this indulgent touch with how the mafia is shown in "the Italian poliziotteschi," Italian Years of Lead gang films that showed them as "boors, bullies, and murderers, rather than genteel gentlemen who must occasionally get their hands dirty and do so oh-so-begrudgingly." Whittiker calls Scorsese's appeal to us to feel Sheeran's "angst" when he's being flown in to kill "his supposed friend" (Hoffa) "a demand too far."

All this reminded me of a richer 2019 New York Film Festival mafia experience, Marco Bellocchio's The Traitor/Il traditore, the epic, multi-continent story of Tommaso Buscetta, the first big Italian mafia figure who chose to turn state's witness. This is a gangster tale that has perspective, both morally and historically. And I was impressed that Pierfrancesco Favino, the star of the film, who gives a career-best performance as Buscetta, strongly urged us both before and after the NYFF public screening to bear in mind that these mafiosi are small, evil, stupid men. Coppola doesn't see that, but he made a glorious American gangster epic with range and perspective. In another format, so did David Chase om the 2000-2007 HBO epic, "The Sopranos." Scprsese has not done so. Monotonously, and at overblown length, he has once again depicted Italo-Americans as gangsters, and (this time) unions as gangs of thugs.

The Irishman, 209 mins,. debuted at New York as Opening Night Film; 15 other international festivals, US theatrical release Nov. 1, wide release in many countries online by Netflix Nov. 27. Metascore 94%.

[Chris Knipp]

KLEBER MENDOÇA FILHO, JULIANO DORNELLES: BACURAU (2019)


SONIA BRAGA (CENTER) IN BACURAU

Not just another Cannes mistake?

This is a bold film for an arthouse filmmaker to produce, and it has moments of rawness and unpredictability that are admirable. But it seems at first hand to be possibly a misstep both for the previously much subtler chronicler of social and political unease as seen in the 2011 Neighboring Sopunds and 2016 Aquarius, Kleber Mendonça Filho, and for Cannes, which may have awarded novelty rather than mastery in giving it half of the 2019 Jury Prize. It's a movie that excites and then delivers a series of scenes of growing disappointment and repugnance. But I'm not saying it won't surprise and awe you.

Let's begin with where we are, which is the Brazilian boonies. Bacurau was filmed in the village of Barra in the municipality of Parelhas and in the rural area of the municipality of Acari, at the Sertão do Seridó region, in Rio Grande do Norte. Mendonça Filho shares credit this time with his regular production designer Juliano Dornelles. (They both came originally from this general region, is one reason.) The Wikipedia article introduces it as a "Brazilian weird western film" and its rural shootout, its rush of horses, its showdowns, and its truckload of coffins may indeed befit that peculiar genre.

How are we to take the action? In his Hollywood Reporter review, Stephen Dalton surprises me by asserting that this third narrative feature "strikes a lighter tone" than the first two and combines "sunny small-town comedy with a fable-like plot" along with "a sprinkle of magic realism." This seems an absurdly watered down description, but the film is many things to many people because it embodies many things. In an interview with Emily Buder, Mendoça Filho himself describes it as a mix of "spaghetti Western, '70's sci-fi, social realist drama, and political satire."

The film feels real enough to be horrifying, but it enters risky sci-fi horror territory with its futuristic human hunting game topic, which has been mostly an area for schlock. (See a list of ten, with the 1932 Most Dangerous Game given as the trailblazer.) However, we have to acknowledge that Mendonca Filho is smart enough to know all this and may want to use the schlock format for his own sophisticated purpose. But despite Mike D'Angelo's conclusion on Letterboxd that the film may "require a second viewing following extensive reading" due to its rootedness in Brazilian politics, the focus on American imperialists and brutal outside exploiters from the extreme right isn't all that hard to grasp.

Bacurau starts off as if it means to be an entertainment, with conventional opening credits and a pleasant pop song celebrating Brazil, but that is surely ironic. A big water truck rides in rough, arriving with three bullet holes spewing agua that its driver hasn't noticed. (The road was bumpy.) There is a stupid, corrupt politician, mayor Tony Jr. (Thardelly Lima), who is complicit in robbing local areas of their water supply and who gets a final comeuppance. The focus is on Bacurau, a little semi-abandoned town in the north whose 94-year-old matriarch Carmelita dies and gets a funeral observation in which the whole town participates, though apart the ceremony's strange magic realist aspects Sonia Braga, as a local doctor called Domingas, stages a loud scene because she insists that the deceased woman was evil. Then, with some, including Carmelita's granddaughter Teresa (Barbara Colen), returned to town from elsewhere, along with the handsome Pacote (Tomaso Aquinas) and a useful psychotic local killer and protector of water rights called Lunga (Silvero Pereira), hostile outsiders arrive, though as yet unseen. Their forerunners are a colorfully costumed Brazilian couple in clownish spandex suits on dustrider motorcycles who come through the town. When they're gone, it's discovered seven people have been shot.

They were an advance crew for a gang of mostly American white people headed by Michael (Udo Kier), whose awkward, combative, and finally murderous conference we visit. This is a bad scene in more ways than one: it's not only sinister and racist, but clumsy, destroying the air of menace and unpredictability maintained in the depiction of Bacurau scenes. But we learn the cell phone coverage of the town has been blocked, it is somehow not included on maps, and communications between northern and southern Brazil are temporarily suspended, so the setting is perfect for this ugly group to do what they've come for, kill locals for sport using collectible automatic weapons. Overhead there is a flying-saucer-shaped drone rumbling in English. How it functions isn't quite clear, but symbolically it refers to American manipulation from higher up. The way the rural area is being choked off requires no mention of Brazil's new right wing strong man Jair Bolsonaro and the Amazonian rain forest.

"They're not going to kill a kid," I said as a group of local children gather, the most normal, best dressed Bacurauans on screen so far, and play a game of dare as night falls to tease us, one by one creeping as far as they can into the dark. But sure enough, a kid gets shot. At least even the bad guys agree this was foul play. And the bad guys get theirs, just as in a good Western. But after a while, the action seems almost too symbolically satisfying - though this is achieved with good staging and classic visual flair through zooms, split diopter effects, Cinemascope, and other old fashioned techniques.

I'm not the only one finding Bacurau intriguing yet fearing that it winds up being confused and all over the place. It would work much better if it were dramatically tighter. Peter DeBruge in Variety notes that the filmakers "haven’t figured out how to create that hair-bristling anticipation of imminent violence that comes so naturally to someone like Quentin Tarantino." Mere vague unexpectedness isn't scary, and all the danger and killing aren't wielded as effectively as they should be to hold our attention and manipulate our emotions.

Bacurau, 131 mins., debuted in Competition at Cannes, where it tied for the Jury Prize with the French film, Ladj Ly's Les misérables. Many other awards and at least 31 other festivals including the NYFF. Metascore 74%. AlloCiné press rating 3.8, with a rare rave from Cahiers du Cinéma. US theatrical distribution by Kino Lorber began Mar. 13, 2020, but due to general theater closings caused by the coronavirus pandemic the company launched a "virtual theatrical exhibition initiative," Kino Marquee, with this film from Mar. 19.

[Chris Knipp]

BERTRAND BONELLO: ZOMBI CHILD (2019)


LOUISE LABEQUE AND WISLANDA LOUIMAT (FAR RIGHT) IN ZOMBI CHILD

Voodoo comes to Paris

If you said Betrand Bonello's films are beautiful, sexy, and provocative you would not be wrong. This new, officially fifth feature (I've still not seen his first one, the 2008 On War), has those elements. Its imagery, full of deep contrasts, can only be described as lush. Its intertwined narrative is puzzling as well.

We're taken right away to Haiti and plunged into the world of voodoo and zombies. Ground powder from the cut-up body of a blowfish is dropped, unbeknownst to him, into a man's shoes. Walking in them, he soon falters and falls. Later, he's aroused from death to the half-alive state of a zombie - and pushed into a numb, helpless labor in the hell of a a sugar cane field with other victims of the same cruel enchantment. In time however something arouses him to enough life to escape.

Some of the Haitian sequences center around a moonlit cemetery whose large tombs seem airy and haunted and astonishingly grand for what we know as the poorest country in the hemisphere.

From the thumping, vibrant ceremonies of Haitian voodoo (Bonello's command of music is always fresh and astonishing as his images are lush and beautiful) we're rushed to the grandest private boarding school you've ever seen, housed in vast stone government buildings. This noble domaine was established by Napoleon Bonaparte on the edge of Paris, in Saint Denis, for the education of children of recipients of the Legion of Honor. It really exists, and attendance there is still on an honorary basis.

Zombi Child oscillates between girls in this very posh Parisian school and people in Haiti. But these are not wholly separate places. A story about a Haitian grandfather (the zombie victim, granted a second life) and his descendants links the two strains. It turns out one of those descendants, Mélissa (Wislanda Louimat), is a new student at the school. A white schoolgirl, Fanny (the dreamy Louise Labeque), who's Mélissa's friend and sponsors her for membership in a sorority, while increasingly possessed by a perhaps imaginary love, also bridges the gap. For the sorority admission Mélissa confesses the family secret of a zombi and voodoo knowledge in her background.

Thierry Méranger of Cahiers du Cinéma calls this screenplay "eminently Bonellian in its double orientation," its "interplay of echoes" between "radically different" worlds designed to "stimulate the spectator's reflection." Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times bluntly declares that it's meant to "interrogate the bitter legacy of French colonialism."

But how so? And if so, this could be a tricky proposition. On NPR Andrew Lapin was partly admiring of how "cerebral and slippery" the film is, but suggests that since voodoo and zombies are all most white people "already know" about Haitian culture, a director coming from Haiti's former colonizing nation (France) must do "a lot of legwork to use these elements successfully in a "fable" where "the real horror is colonialism." The posh school comes from Napoleon, who coopted the French revolution, and class scenes include a history professor lecturing on this and how "liberalism obscures liberty."

I'm more inclined to agree with Glenn Kenny's more delicately worded praise in his short New York Times review of the film where he asserts that the movie’s inconclusiveness is the source of its appeal. Zombi Child, he says, is fueled by insinuation and fascination. The fascination, the potent power, of the occult, that's what Haiti has that the first wold lacks.

One moment made me authentically jump, but Bonello isn't offering a conventional horror movie. He's more interested in making his hints of voodoo's power and attraction, even for the white lovelorn schoolgirl, seem as convincing as his voodoo ceremonies, both abroad and back in Haiti, feel thoroughly attractive, or scary, and real. These are some of the best voodoo scenes in a movie. This still may seem like a concoction to you. Its enchantments were more those of the luxuriant imagery, the flowing camerawork, the delicious use of moon- and candle-light, the beautiful people, of whatever color. This is world-class filmmaking even if it's not Bonello's best work.

Bonello stages things, gets his actors to live them completely, then steps back and lets it happen. Glenn Kenny says his "hallmark" is his "dreamy detachment." My first look at that was the 2011 House of Tolerence (L'Apollonide - mémoires de la maison close), which I saw in Paris, a languorous immersion in a turn-of-the-century Parisian brothel, intoxicating, sexy, slightly repugnant. Next came his most ambitious project, Saint Laurent(2014), focused on a very druggy period in the designer's career and a final moment of decline. He has said this became a kind of matching panel for Apollonide. (You'll find that in an excellent long Q&A after the NYFF screening.) Saint Laurent's "forbidden" (unsanctioned) picture of the fashion house is as intoxicating, vibrant, and cloying as the maison close, with its opium, champagne, disfigurement and syphilis. No one can say Gaspard Ulliel wasn't totally immersed in his performance. Nocturama (2016) takes a group of wild young people who stage a terrorist act in Paris, who seem to run aground in a posh department store at the end, Bonello again getting intense action going and then seeming to leave it to its own devices, foundering. Those who saw the result as "shallow cynicism" (like A.O. Scott) missed how exciting and powerful it was. (Mike D'Angelo didn't.)

Zombi Child is exciting at times too. But despite its gorgeous imagery and sound, its back and forth dialectic seems more artificial and calculating than Bonello's previous films.

Zombi Child, mins., debuted at Cannes Directors Fortnight May 2019, included in 13 other international festivals, including Toronto and New York. It released theatrically in France Jun. 12, 2020 (AlloCiné press rating 3.7m 75%) and in the US Jan. 24, 2020 (Metascore 75%). Now available in "virtual theater" through Film Movement (Mar. 23-May 1, 2020), which benefits the theater of your choice. https://www.filmmovement.com/zombi-child

[Chris Knipp]

OLIVIER ASSAYAS: WASP NETWORK (2019)


GAEL GARCÍA BERNAL AND PENELOPE CRUZ IN WASP NETWORK

Spies nearby

The is a movie about the Cuban spies sent to Miami to combat anti-Castro Cuban-American groups, and their capture. They are part of what the Cubans called La Red Avispa (The Wasp Network). The screenplay is based on the book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War by Fernando Morais, and it's mainly from the Wasp, Cuban point of view, not the FBI point of view. Unlike the disastrous Seberg, no time is spent looking over the shoulders of G-men, nor will this story give any pleasure to right wing Miami Cubans. But it won't delight leftists much either, or champions of the Cuban Five. The issues of why one might leave Cuba and why one might choose not to are treated only superficially. There's no analysis of US behavior toward Cuba since the revolution.

On the plus side, the film is made in an impeccable, clear style (with one big qualification: see below) and there's an excellent cast with as leads Edgar Ramirez (of the director's riveting miniseries Carlos), Penelope Cruz (Almodóvar's muse), Walter Moura (Escobar in the Netflix series "Narcos"), Ana de Armas (an up-and-comer who's actually Cuban but lives in Hollywood now), and Gael García Bernal (he of course is Mexican, Moura is Brazilian originally, and Ramirez is Venezuelan). They're all terrific, and other cast members shine. Even a baby is so amazing I thought she must be the actress' real baby.

Nothing really makes sense for the first hour. We don't get the whole picture, and we never do, really. We focus on René Gonzalez (Édgar Ramirez), a Puerto Rican-born pilot living in Castro’s Cuba and fed up with it, or the brutal embargo against Castro by the US and resulting shortage of essential goods and services, who suddenly steals a little plane and flies it to Miami, leaving behind his wife Olga and young daughter. Olga is deeply shocked and disappointed to learn her husband is a traitor. He has left without a word to her. Born in Chicago, he was already a US citizen and adapts easily, celebrated as an anti-Castro figure.

We also follow another guy, Juan Pablo Roque (Wagner Moura) who escapes Havana by donning snorkel gear and swimming to Guantanamo, not only a physical challenge but riskier because prison guards almost shoot him dead when he comes out of the water. Roque and Gonzalez are a big contrast. René is modest, content with small earnings, and starts flying for a group that rescues Cuban defectors arriving by water. Juan Pablo immediately woos and marries the beautiful Ana Marguerita Martinez (Ana de Armas) and, as revealed by an $8,000 Rolex, is earning big bucks but won't tell Ana how. This was the first time I'd seen Wagner Moura, an impressively sly actor who as Glenn Kenny says, "can shift from boyish to sinister in the space of a single frame" - and that's not the half of it.

This is interesting enough to keep us occupied but it's not till an hour into the movie, with a flashback to four years earlier focused on Cuban Gerardo Hernandez (Garcia Bernal) that we start to understand something of what is going on. We learn about the CANF and Luis Posada Carriles (Tony Plana), and a young man's single-handed effort to plant enough bombs to undermine the entire Cuban tourist business. This late-arriving exposition for me had a deflating and confounding effect. There were still many good scenes to follow. Unfortunately despite them, and the good acting, there is so much exposition it's hard to get close to any of the individual characters or relationships.

At the moment I'm an enthusiastic follower of the FX series "The Americans." It teaches us that in matters of espionage, it's good to have a firm notion of where the main characters - in that case "Phillip" and "Elizabeth" - place their real, virtually unshakable loyalties, before moving on. Another example of which I'm a longtime fan is the spy novels of John le Carré. You may not be sure who's loyal, but you always know who's working for British Intelligence, even in the latest novel the remarkable le Carré, who at 88, has just produced (Agent Running in the Field - for which he's performed the audio version, and no one does that better). To be too long unclear about these basics in spydom is fatal.

It's said that Assayas had a lot of trouble making Wasp Network, which has scenes shot in Cuba in it. At least the effort doesn't show. We get a glimpse of Clinton (this happened when he was President) and Fidel, who, in a hushed voice, emphatically, asserts his confidence that the Red Avispa was doing the right thing and that the Americans should see that. Whose side do you take?

Wasp Network, 123 mins., debuted at Venice and showed at about ten other international festivals including Toronto, New York, London and Rio. It was released on Netflix Jun. 19, 2019, and that applies to many countries (13 listed on IMDb). Metascore 54%.

[Chris Knipp]

MAX LUGAVERE, CHRIS NEWHARD: LITTLE EMPTY BOXES (2024)


MAX AND KATHY LUGAVERE IN LITTLE EMPTY BOXES

A son helps his mother with a fatal disease and shares with us what he learns about it

In Little Empty Boxes, filmmaker Max Lugavere, working with his codirector and cameraman, chronicles his effort to help his mother Kathy with her mysterious dementia. He searches for answers behind her illness, finding lifestyle and diet choices from decades earlier are significant factors. Playing the main roles in this documentary are director Lugavere starring as himself ("for the first time"), and his mother, ("as 'Mommy'"). To offset this jokey sound to the opening credits they end by noting that the film was made in cooperation with the Alzheimer's Association of America. And we are going to learn about that in both a personal and scientific way. The value of this documentary is that it has both elements.

Old family footage complete the picture in a film about Max, an adult son investigating the onset of dementia and Parkinson's in his beloved mother Kathy, and his effort to understand her condition and, if possible, do something to slow down its outset or alleviate its symptoms. Diet turns out to be a major factor. We, Americans, or Westerners at large, now seem to be eating our way more and more frequently into early mental decline. Environment and stress are other causes. None of these factors has been improving, and the unfavorable numbers have been increasing rapidly - a familiar story, isn't it? And aren't we making ourselves worse by worrying about such things? - A vicious cycle.

Max Lugavere is a robust and fitness-conscious young man with a deep voice who enjoys cavorting in front of the camera in millennial casual attire, including form-fitting and bicep-revealing T shirts. He actually shot a very promising film of his mother, which we glimpse here, when he was just a boy, a film whose cheer and charm perhaps inevitably outweigh those of the more thought-provoking later footage. He shows us in the first moments, as he gets up and cleans his teeth, his adult reading: works by Carl Sagon, Michio Kaku, and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers top the bedside book pile. And on top of those, Ayn Rand's dystopian fictional critique of socialism, Anthem.

Taking a little time first off to display its maker's quirks and always from a first person POV throughout, tHis is a documentary in which the director makes himself both the narrator and, in a way, the main character; but this is nonetheless always primarily a loving and personal film about Alzheimer's disease and related illnesses in which it's his mother who is the center of attention. Lugavere is a filmmaker and TV cohost in L.A., but as eldest of three sons, has, at the outset, when he learns of his mother's worsening mental condition, remained perhaps closest to her even while living across the country from her and his two brothers, who along with their father and her ex-husband, all live in New York.

We follow Max in a visit to Kathy that finds her rapidly worsening, at 62, as her caretaker/housekeeper Debra recounts, behaving strangely, unable to finish sentences, dangerous to leave alone in her art-filled Manhattan apartment, whose spectacular city view perhaps reflects that her ex-husband, Bruce, was a garmento, a princeling of the garment district. Max has decided to give up L.A. for now, and resign from his job as a TV host. We see him meet with his cohost to inform her of this decision (though we wonder if this is a performance, since they are both performers), and next he is in a plane to New York.

We meet Max's two brothers and one brother's husband, only briefly, for a spectacular apartment Fourth of July fireworks-watching party. Max, who explains he has always liked helping out with family health issues, takes Kathy for a grueling series of brain scans, including one that requires her to have her head locked in place in for 45 minutes that she very strenuously objects to, up to the last three minutes of the 45. She is already frightened. These tests add to the discomfort. But Max explains they are essential for her to have the best diagnosis and the best treatment.

Kathy sometimes seems overwhelmed and downcast, but she can be very feisty too/ His presence seems to help her in itself. She and Max have great chemistry: she most thrives with her sons and lives for them, and says so. Despite her fear and initial depression, she is a lively person who can still be seen smiling and laughing, to the end of the film. (The film does not invade the privacy of her grim final months and days and merely reports on them in final on screen texts.) Finally when the tests done at Max's instigation are all done, a neurologist, reviewing all of them, explains to her and to him what they mean: that she has a form of Lewy Body disease(or LBD).

These are illnesses caused by deposits of an abnormal protein in the brain and may combine Parkinson's and other forms of dementia. LBD starts with thinking and behavior changes that are followed by problems with movement. This is a sad illness that is perhaps less common, but happens to have been what occurs to Georg Kienzler, the father of Léa Seydoux played by Pascal Greggory in Mia Hansen-Løve's memorable 2022 film One Fine Morning/Un beau matin. Georg's helplessness and the disappearance of his personality and brilliant intelligence, precisely recreated by Greggory, were both touching and hard to watch. Lewy Body disease, Max mentions, leads to worse outcomes than Alzheimer's and Parkinson's - as if they weren't enough! "To me that's scary," he says. Scary indeed. Few experiences can be harder than to have to live through a parent's gradual disappearance while the body is still there before you, week after week, month after month. In the film, Georg is moved to a facility where he can be cared for, a difficult decision. Kathy is lucky that, as far as we can see, most of her last days are spent at home, with Max and sometimes his brothers Ben and Andrew, around to keep her company along with a private caretaker.

The film is finally a portrait of mother and son, with an intense digression about her diagnosis and its causes and treatment. Much is personal here, and Kathy and Max have a warm relationship in every scene. But there is a solid amount of expertise presented through live interviews with scientists and doctors. Much emphasis is on diet, which, with stress, is a major factor in developing dementia. This is a disease that develops over decades.

The long lead-up to an ultimately fatal onset means there is plenty of time to prevent, delay, or reduce dementia. But the problem is that by the time it is usually diagnosed, it has been developing for a long time and there are irreversible changes in the brtain. Still Max, who we've already seen doing yoga and working out seriously with weights on his own, is seen with Kathy while she is working out with a personal trainer, going on walks including her old neighborhood in Washington Heights, Brooklyn, and eating with her foods recommended by neuro-nutritionists: fresh vegetables doused in extra virgin olive oil and generously flavored with Korean kimchi.

Kathy does seem to improve later in the film after this healthy regime has begun - she is probably much helped by Max's warmth and presence. She still appears well able to walk, even though she has become incontinent, and she appears to be more cheerful now and a good sport about the healthy meals, though she says about kimchi, "Gee, what do they put in this stuff?" Online texts spare us but report on the last days when Kathy's cognitive function went into serious decline, she finally developed cancer so her blood became toxic, and she died three months later.

This is an informative and warmly human film about coping and understnding: it tells a lot many don't know about dementia and its lifestyle causes, but it also documents filial affection: a loyal son who drops everything to be with his mother during her last days.

The tech aspects and music here are unexceptional but fine. Some archival family footage, while not unusual, is used particularly tellingly at special moments. There is expert information about Alzheimer's and diet. It's made unusually clear here how long the country was dominated by false dietary information: the belief that fats and cholesterol are harmful, which are now known to be an essential part of diet, and the turn to "low fat" diets and diets free of meat, poultry, diary, and cheese were deficient in essentials.

The film's most memorable parts simply show the warm interactions of a young man and his mother. You may, like me, want to go out and buy some radishes and some kimchi after watching. Lugavere's research led him to co-author with Paul Grewal M.D.Genius Fooods, a book about diet and mental function published in 2018 that was a Times. bestseller.

Little Empty Boxes ,, 100 mins., released by Abramorama in New York Apr. 19, Los Angeles Apr. 26, 2024.

[Chris Knipp]

MAY 3, MAY 10 2024 RELEASE

MARIJA KAVTARADZE: SLOW (2023)


KimStim Films is proud to present US theatrical release of SLOW, a film by Marija Kavtaradze. Winner of the World Cinema Directing Award at 2023 Sundance Film Festival and Lithuania’s Official Submission for the 96th Academy Awards, SLOW will open at IFC Center in New York on May 3rd, and at Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles and at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago on May 10th. Other cities will follow.

Contemporary dancer Elena (Greta Grinevičiūtė) meets Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicėnas) when he is assigned to interpret via sign language in a dance class she is teaching to deaf youth. Their connection is immediate, and as they gravitate toward each other, resisting the forces and interventions of their separate daily lives, their bond deepens from platonic to romantic. When Dovydas discloses his asexuality, the couple commit themselves to honoring their individual needs in tandem. As they continue to weave more tightly together, they struggle to negotiate sacrifice and compromise and are forced to discover the edges of their generosity toward the other.

SLOW is Marija Kavtaradze’s sophomore feature, and in it the two leads conjure undeniable chemistry and heartbreakingly complicated, stubborn, and private humanity. The result is an instantly recognizable dance between self and other; choreographed with elegance, grace, and love. Shot in appropriately tactile 16mm (first film in Lithuania to do so in at least ten years), this thoughtful and moving romantic drama offers a compelling look at a relationship rarely portrayed on screen, let alone with such candor and sensitivity.

2023 // 108min // In Lithuanian with English subtitles // Lithuania, Spain, Sweden // Not Rated

[Chris Knipp]

HILA MEDALIA: MOURNING IN LOD (2023)

Eleven years ago I reviewed Dancing in Jaffa, a documentary about a dance class that brought together Arabs and Jews. Here she gets closer to the belly of the beast of Arab-Israeli conflict, following the fates of three families that are inextricably intertwined in a vicious cycle of violence in the city of Lod, Israel, where Israelis and Palestinians live side by side.

Made in partnership with MTV Documentary Films, “Mourning in Lod” revisits a painful chapter from May 2021, during the previous conflict between Israel and Hamas. As the terror group fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, domestic unrest between Jewish and Arab Israelis erupted in Lod.

In a February, 2024 article, "Film about deadly 2021 Arab-Jewish riots gives insight into post-Oct. 7 life in Israel, "The Times of Israel discusses Israel filmmaker Medalia's skill at getting close to Arabs and Jews alike in areas of tension as illustrated in the current film, and earlier ones.


MTV Documentary Films and Paramount+ will release the film in theaters in NY and LA on April 19 and*it will be available to stream on Paramount+ on May 17.

[Chris Knipp]

REID DAVENPORT: I DIDN'T SEE YOU THERE (2022)

Man with a camera

Director Reid Davenport shows us from first hand what it is like to take the BART system in the Bay Area as a person with cerebral palsy in a wheel chair. He narrates the film and shot it himself. He says he made several films before but didn't shoot them himself. They showed what he looks like to the world. That is the subject here too, but this time his purpose is to focus on what the world looks like to him. He captures the rhythms and clatter and beauty around him as he moves about.

Reid says the new camera allows him "to be more spontaneous and look for shapes and patterns and not worry about meanings and words."

Well, it doesn't quite turn out that way. This sill becomes a somewhat sketchy picture of Reid'slife. He lives in Oakland, Califoria, where he can be an artist, which he sas he has settled on after striking out at a series of other occupations We don't learn altogether what akk that means, but Oakland apparently is a place where it's relatively easy to get around. It has a friendly system of public transportation, particularly BART (one trip on a bus means an encounter with a driver who's very bossy), and there is a system of contiguous, even sidewalks.

Reid comes from Bethel, Connecticut, we learn, and goes back there several times, visiting with his loving mother, who wants nothing more than for hm to move back to the East Coast, and other family members. He says he sees Bethel as a "Purgatory" because it wants to be a suburb but isn't, quite. It seems like a bright, green, sunny place, and above all a place where loved ones are, which Oakland is not.

One thing we know: New York City isn't handicapped-friendly. Try taking the subway with a wheelchair, or going down a Manhattan sidewalk.

While he is making the film, which he continually narrates, like a diary, near Reid'sk Oakland apartment a big red circus tent has gone up. It seems to haunt him. He never quite finds out what it is, but it awakens in him thoughts of the Freak Show in the time of the original Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus run by the impresario PT Barnum. It turns out Bethel, Connecticut was the home of PT Barnum. When he's back on a visit there, Reid films the Barnum house. It now has a new statue of the man that has gone up. The Freak Show exemplifies all that was wrong with the way people approached difference and disability in the past, a legacy that lingers, Reid implies.

It doesn't feel like Reid is treated like a freak in the moments he films here, exactly. What we learn, partly though conversation with his mother, is that he seems to her oversensitive sometimes - though eventually she usually comes to understand. Mostly perhaps the annoyance is that people keep offering to help Reid when he doesn't need any help, and thereby setting him apart. Toward the end, he approaches his apartment building and someone has laid out an electrical wire that's in his way. He is adamant about it, furious that such a thing happens where he lives. Perhaps this just concentrates the frustration of being who he is, the daily difficulty of everything, even of handling a pair of glasses. He has the same eye doctor as his little niece in Bethel. But putting on the glasses - that's different for him than for her, no doubt..

Watching this film was colored by an experience I had some years ago on a long train ride to a remote part of western Massachusetts. The only other person in the train car with me was a man with cerebral palsy, and we wound up having a conversation. I would frankly not have thought it was possible. At first I could not even understand him. (I am sure he was harder to understand than Reid Davenport.) He was a remarkable individual who was traveling to a place where he was going to teach disabled people and people with cerebral palsy. He also taught a program of dance for disabled people, he told me, a method he himself had developed. He had his own rig with him, which he was using, that enabled him to manipulate a laptop computer and to type. Part of it was made of wood. He had quite a bit of baggage with him. He asked me to get some of it down for him: that was how the conversation started. But being curious, I just kept asking questions. I got his name and email address, but the connection never developed further. Still, it opened up a new awareness for me of how some people triumph over unimaginable difficulties.

A neighbor has a friendly conversation with Reid and tells him he is heroic. This was how I felt about the man on the train. He had undertaken to deal with unimaginable difficulties and was triumphing.

The main thing is that Reid Davenport has made a film. Films about people with CP help open up their world to us. Just a trailer for one about a young artist who has severe CP (Reid Davenport speaks much more easily) called King Gimp brought me to tears.

We are all struggling to function in the world, I think. Just not this much.

I Didn't See You There, 76 mins., debuted at Sundance, where it won a directing award; it has been in major documentary festivals and other international festivals. It was releaased on VOD Feb. 20, 2024. Metacritic rating: 74%

[Chris Knipp]

ENA SERDIJAREVIĆ : SWEET DREAMS (2023)


MUHAMMAD KHAN AND LISA ZWEERMAN IN SWEET DREAMS

Noble rot

Ena Sendijarević's second feature is a deliciously shot and costumed drama about colonial rot; it relates to Lucretia Martel's Zama and Felipe Glvez Haberle's The Settlers. This time the focus is a Dutch settlement on an Indonesian island around 1900. The claustrophobia is enhanced by shooting in square ratio as she did in her debut film also with dp Emo Weemhoff. In her Locarno review for Variety Jessica Kiang calls Sendijarević "a formidable talent with an eye for absurdity in Academy ratio, and a feel for the manicured, placid surfaces that contain rot and rebellion just as corsetry cinches in flesh." The moment is the end of a sugar plantation regime after the Dutch owner Jan (Hans Dagelet) - only first names are given - suddenly and rather suspiciously dies. His widow Agathe (Renée Soutendijk) summons his weak, cowardly son Cornelis (Florian Myjer) and the latter's prickly and prominently pregnant wife Josefien (Lisa Zweerman) to come from the Netherlands to take over.

Agathe is a deeply dug-in colonialist type like Isabelle Huppert's character in Claire Denis' film about Africa, White Material: no matter how much it's all over, she's never going to be willing to leave the country and go home. Josefien and Cornelis on the other hand have little intention of staying. You almost wonder what they came for. Since she's horny all the time (sometimes even a bedpost will do) Josefien may be there to get laid. She's interested in the sexy leading local guy, Reza (Muhammad Khan), the most notable of the farm and factory workers, who're now on strike. Reza is only interested in the housekeeper, Siti (Hayati Azis), whom he wants to run away with. She isn't interested. Local women say Siti thinks she's superior to them;; she says she is and she's probably right. But is that a safe position?

Everything is a little absurd and rather surreal. The mise en scène is lush and beautiful: rich interiors, outdoor greenery as rich and smooth as the drawings in a children's book. And lots of locals grouped around in period costume; a big game hunt; handsome hand-drawn people-carts. Everything feels wonderful, and wrong, a toy world poised to topple.

All focus gradually shifts to the inward-looking and remote Siti, who has a special status. She has a son by the late Jan, the haughty young Karel (Rio Kaj Den Haas). A bewhiskered Reverend (Peter Faber) who's also the local notary, comes to announce that Jan, whom we've seen taking Karel big game hunting with him, drew up a will leaving the entire plantation to the boy. At this point the sardonic plot assumes the quality of an endgame. The family appears stymied by this development. Cornelis plays feebly with the idea of using foul means to get rid of Karol. In fact at the end the boy is all that remains.

Everybody in this movie is so obnoxious and unloveable you can't wait to see them squirm, while Siti enjoys watching. It's almost like Sendijarević is turning them on a spit - slow cookery - until finally the enjoyment must end and things get really hot and quite ovdrdone. The pleasure is in the long warmup: the finale is abrupt and extreme, though it fits in with the surreal style that has always been there.

The colonial mansion is a World of Interiors delight with large ebony fixtures and furniture and striking eye-candy colored walls, a rose-red that glows, a bright green of the sort Howard Hodgkin loved. The Dutch women wear form-fitting frilly thin ivory-colored frocks that look as if they will melt and crumble away in the heat. As Karel, Rio Kaj Den Haas is a decoration in himself. The mixture of races has made something sleek and pretty. He has no trouble feeling superior. He actually giggles watching a native man get beaten.

As William Repass put it in Slant at Locarno, this film like Zama "takes aim at a less conspicuous layer of colonization than outright atrocity," choosing to dramatize "the futility, the hypocrisy, the stultifying blows to cultural diversity that take place when one people proclaim the right to exploit another’s labor and resources in the name of civilization." And this is true, but it's never put so bluntly as that, and what you may take away from Sweet Dreams won't be such generalizations so much as the discomfort of transplanted westerners and how tastily done it all is. All the details are satisfying, including VIncent Sinceretti's "extravagantly rich sound design" (Kiang) that's "so multilayered that you can differentiate the crickets from the gnats from the omnipresent, whining mosquitoes." They especially like to bite Josefien, whose face gets red and blotchy from smacking them.

A Letterboxd contributor calls Sweet Dreams "The Yorgos Lanthimosification of Triangle of Sadness." Another riffs further: "It’s like Triangle of Sadness, The Favourite and The Mosquito Coast all got put into a blender to make a tropical cocktail and this was the juicy result. I’ll be dreaming of those coloured walls for days." I'll be dreaming of them too.

Sweet Dreams, 102 mins., debuted at Locarno where Renée Soutendijk won a Best Performance award. It was the Netherlands' Official Selection for the 96th Academy Awards, and was included in at least a dozen international festivals, including Göteborg, Taipei, Thessaloniki and Toronto, and received numerous nominations and awards. Dekanalog is releasing it in the US Fri. Apr. 12, 2024, opening for an exclusive theatrical run at New York City's Metrograph, with a streaming premiere on Metrograph At Home, where it will be available for an exclusive one-month engagement.

[Chris Knipp]

DIEU HAO DO: HAO ARE YOU (2023)

A sprightly documentary exploration of family background does not reinvent the genre but is assured

This documentary about the international squabbles of a Chinese family. The 36-year-old filmmaker Dieu Hao Do, who grew up in Germany, sets out to learn the stories. This family, he explains, has fled two wars, from China to Vietnam, then from Vietnam to Germany. Along the way, seven siblings stopped speaking to each otherm some for many years. All blame communism for the problems.

His mother is in Germany. So is his father and his sister, who was born in Vietnam and is six years older. His father has dementia. He can say questions to him, but his father cannot answer. His mother recounts life in Vietnam under the communists and cries.

There's a side story: his father had another wife and family but left them to be with his mother, who was stigmatized as a home wrecker.

He grew up in Saxony beside two other families from Vietnam, the others ethnic Vietnamese, his from the Chinese minority there. His uncles and aunts live on three continents - not talking. In the film, he goes out to talk to them, one by one.

Number 1, the eldest, is an alcoholic retired businessman living alone in HongKong. He describes the communists in Vietnam in simple, dismissive terms. Most of his time is psent talkngh about his father having a mistress, his early estrangement. Number 2 is in Los Angeles.

From Kino-Zeit: (from the German:)
However, the documentary is only of limited cinematic interest. It is too permeated by an almost pedagogical distance, and here one would have liked to feel the author's passionate voice more strongly. As in the plot of the documentary itself, Do tries so hard to unite all the family poles in such an unbiased way that it is not really clear what he actually wants to tell. At some point you lose track of who is at odds with whom, until the documentary becomes almost luridly private. Although it is impressive to see how vulnerable and sensitive the individual family members still are, how they cannot forgive anything, how they are still driven by their frustration with life, and how clear it becomes what the collective silence has done to everyone, it does seem a little too privatized.
More historical, social context and more information on the social conditions as well as more personal impressions of those affected would have given the documentary a stronger emotional and political core. Unfortunately, one omission is that the alienating migrant experience in Germany does not play a role here, despite the attack on the Vietnamese refugee camps in Rostock in 1992. Especially as Do is unfortunately not a particularly talented narrator in the voice-over, so that the emotional pain, which can be sensed here in some places, is not tangible enough.
Cinematic poetry has Dos

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[Chris Knipp]

DEV PATEL: MONKEY MAN (2024)


DEV PATEL IN MONKEY MAN

Patel's directorial debut is violent and beautiful abstract cinematic art

Dev Patel has gradually grown over the years and now, at 33, has blossomed with a film wholly his own. The story idea is his, the script he co-wrote, he directed it, and he stars in it. The choice of an Indian setting for a very violent action movie must be his own distinctive choice born out of his background. HIs parents, though originally from Nairobi, Kenya, are both of Gujarati Indian descent; and of course he looks perfectly Indian, only he's from Harrow, London, and sounds it. This, though people know him as the Indian boy who got suddenly rich and famous depicted in Danny Boyle's highly popular film Sllumdog Millionaire. Dev's done many other notable things. He's even recently been in Wes Anderson's Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. He will always be, to some of us, the goofy fellow in "Skins," where he first notably appeared, using his own English accent, at the age of sixteen. He's been around for seventeen years, doing many roles and accents.

Along the way he's played in English literary classics in The Green Knigit and an offbeat (in being colour-blind) version of David Copperfield. But before that he performed the difficult task of mastering an Australia accent for the true saga, Lion. He used his own normal UK accent, as an IT whiz for the US TV series "Newsroom", and, doing an Indian accent again, played brilliant maths genius S. Ramanujan in The Man Who Knew Infinity.

He's also played that "Skins" goofiness but with an Indian accent in the Best Marigold Hotel franchise, where he took on an Indian role, which he does here: Monkey Man takes place in an Indian city called Yatana, a fictional stand-in for Mumbai. Dev showed all kinds of talent from the start and he has been all over the map. Those who've followed him knew that he has long been an accomplished martial artist. He also used to visit India a lot. This all comes together in Monkey Man, a violent action film whose climactic passages are a breathless sequence of unending to the death man-to-man combat sequences. Monkey Man is a demanding role for Dev Patel in more ways than ever before. And it's exciting to watch it happen.

It's been said that Monkey Man is as violent as Gareth Evans' 2012 The Raid: Redemption. - a movie consisting almost entirely of violent fighting in a dark ghetto building 15 stories high, fighting to the death with weapons and pistols but mostly with machetes and knives and hand-to-hand combat. If you want pure violence, maybe The Raid is better. But Monkey Man has more. It has the charisma of Dev Patel, tall, handsome, dark, with glowing teeth and glistening black hair; a revenge story of family trauma; the flavor of political and social inequalities of India, and hints of a world of spiritual redemption, all in a whirl of beautiful, sometimes abstract cinematic images.

The lead character's mentally and physically scarred character lives for revenge, for wrongs done to him and his mother Neela (Adithi Kalkunte) as a child when she was killed as villagers were being removed from their forest homes. He's now a slum dweller known as Bobby or Kid who fights wearing a simian mask and gets the titular billing of Monkey Man. In this he partakes of the legendary, since the monkey links him with Hanuman, the companion of the god Rama and incarnation of the god Shiva. The emcee of these events is the F-word rich, riotous Tiger (Sharlto Copley, devouring and delighting in his part). The Kid gets close to the objects of his hatred by being hired by Queenie Kapoor (Ashwini Kalsekar, one of a number of beautiful Indian women in the early part of the film), whose restaurant is a frequent hangout of the police chief (Sikandar Kher), one of the Kid's arch enemies.

There is a lot of politics tied to this, which may lead, indeed apparently
is leading, to censorship problems for the movie in India, since its expected release there has been delayed. The police chief of the film is allied with the Sovereign Party, headed by Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande) a self-styled guru and pious hypocrite, which looks a little too like India's actual ruling BJP, and is deliciously unctuous and fake. Bilge Eberi in New York/Vulture makes use of information from an Indian colleague to point out how frequently this movie underlines interconnections between religious and violence in its Indian settings, "religious imagery" in "righteous violence." I recommend also Swarah Salih, whose review in YEntertainment describes this as "a thrilling and spiritually resonant action film that offers more than its surface promise of an exciting action romp," and explains this in detail. But Patel has also done his action film homework too, as Matthew Jackson explains in his more admiring AV Club review, touching on all the works of the genre,not slavishly, but so that it's clear how this one relates to yet transcends the tradition in its own way.

These reviewers point out, and I would too here, that what I'm summarizing here, must be qualified by explaining that all these, however rich, details of Monkey Man's plot aren't spelled out in this kind of obvious way we're using here, but are vaguely hinted, at first wholly non-verbally, only gradually filling in with words and flashbacks. This is a film that is so non-verbal, and in its early sequences so violently close-up in all its images, that it reads sometimes more like an avant-garde work of abstract cinematic imagery than an action film. This felt off-putting and confusing, though if one went with the flow it was uniquely beautiful, and with Dev Patel threaded in and out of it.

You also may not know know what is going to happen; are waiting for an action film without, quite, the action. Then, halfway through, it comes, in spades. Monkey Man gradually pulls back and has more long shots, and also settles in to the violent martial arts vilm is always wanted to be - except that it's more sophisticated than that, both visually, and in the complex political and religious references that reveal how, during and in between Patel's lifelong frequent visits to India from his native England, he was indeed doing a lot of homework. And he was struggling to make this film. It reportedly took multiple tries, growing and layering as it went onto his initial image, which began with nothing but the image of a masked Monkey Man fighter with a link to Hanuman. The time and the layers have now payed off.

This isn't necessarily an easy watch - not because of the violence: some, perhaps most, of us come for that. Rather because at first it's difficult to follow, with its extreme closeups, implicit rather than explicit exposition, and its frequent switches from English to yellow-subtitled Bengali dialogue: it's definitely a film that will grown on repeat viewings.

[Chris Knipp]

NY ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL - RECOMMENDED FILMS
Here are some films recommended by Richard Gray of Reel Bits.com. He sayhs "there's alwas so much to watch." You said it, Richard.

"The New York Asian Film Festival remains one of the highlights of the festival calendar. Now in its 22nd edition, the collaboration between the New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center returns from 14-30 July this year.

"Opening with Lee Won-suk’s KILLING ROMANCE, the program contains a whopping 78 films from Hong Kong, Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Singapore, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These include Kazuyoshi Kumakiri #MANHOLE, featured on the festival poster, and the international premiere of Lee Byeong-heon’s DREAM as the centerpiece."

Mountain Woman (Takeshi Fukunaga, Japan 2023)
This director's Ainu Mosir came along as part of a slow wave of recognition of Japan’s Ainu peoples, delivers more visual poetry about outsiders with a unique blend of quiet contemplation and breathtakingly inevitable outcomes. If his previous work looked at cultural identity through the coming of age story structure, then here he applies his naturalistic lens to a period setting. Read our full review.

Art College 1994 (Liu Jian, China 2023)
Set in China in the 1990s, this animated film takes a look at youth featuring a group of art students. What is art? Ponder that during the incredibly measured pace of this highly detailed Chinese animated film from Liu Jian. Disarmingly wry and insightfully funny. At others, it feels almost documentary in nature. Read our full review.

December (Anshul Chauhan, India 2023)
We’ve been following Anshul Chauhan for a few years now, especially the excellent Kontora (2019) from a few years ago, along with his more recent short film Leo’s Return (2021), which was another superb character study. So, a new feature film from the director is something to get excited about. This one follows the psychological trauma of a person fighting for a reduction of her prison sentence seven years after murdering a classmate.

Egoist (Daishi Matsunaga, Japan)
One of the LGBTQIA+ films tagged in this year’s program and director Daishi Matsunaga’s film is playing in New York following it’s German premiere at Nippon Connection in June. Based on the autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama, it follows two young men who start a passionate affair following a workout session — although that relationship is soon put to the test.

Okiku and the World (Junji Sakamoto, Japan)
Following its world premiere at IFFR earlier this year, Junji Sakamoto’s crisp black and white film about two people working as “manure men” in this Edo Period jidaigeki. Already getting terrific reviews, film critic Mark Schilling calls this “a model of how to inventively and feelingly revive a core genre riddled with formulas and conventions.”

Phantom (South Korea)
Lee Hae-young, who was the director behind the superior 2018 thriller Believer, returns with a spy drama is set in 1933 Korea, during Japanese colonial rule, and features a cast of Korean stars — Sol Kyung-Gu, Lee Ha-Nee, Park So-Dam, Kim Dong-Hee, and Seo Hyun-Woo to name a few — speaking almost entirely in Japanese.

In Broad Daylight (Hong Kong)
Coming from Hong Kong, director Lawrence Kan bases his latest thriller on true events. Starring Jennifer Yu as a reporter, this very topical film follows a news agency who investigates abuse at a nursing home.

A-Town Boyz (US)
One of the films that looks at this Asian diaspora around the world, this US documentary focuses on three young men who are involved in Atlanta’s vibrant hip-hop scene: Harrison “Vickz” Kim, Eugene Chung, and Jamy “Bizzy” Long. Director Eunice Lau’s film enjoys its world premiere at NYAFF this year.

Gaga (Taiwan)
One of the rare looks at Indigenous Taiwanese communities in this Golden Horse winning film from director Laha Mebow and a cast of non-professional actors. The title, which refers to the spiritual traditions of the Indigenous Tayal people, gives audiences a look at the tensions that exist between First Nations traditions and modern practices to this day in Taiwan.

Redemption with Life
As part of the Filmmaker in Focus on director Zhang Wei section, NYAFF presents the world premiere of his latest outing. NYAFF describes the film, which follows a motorcycle club, as “a dark meditation on capitalistic corruption in which classic codes of honor and loyalty are put to the ultimate test.”

NYAFF Narrative Shorts Animation Showcase - Animation 2023
Yes, it’s a little bit of a cheat putting in a showcase of 10 films as the eleventh entry on this list, but where else will you find such a terrific set of animated shorts from across Asia? From the world premiere of Kong Son-hee’s BORDRLINE (South Korea) to Masashi Kawamura brand new film HIDARI (Japan), these span the realms of experimental fringes to the potential next big thing. Don’t miss them.

[Chris Knipp]

Art College 1994
Liu Jian 2023 China 118 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Loosely based on filmmaker Liu Jian’s own experiences at the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts, this consistently compelling masterwork proves that art school students are just about the same everywhere.
Showtimes
July 16
7:30 PM
The Cord of Life
The Cord of Life
Qiao Sixue 2022 China 96 minutes Mongolian with English subtitles
New York Premiere

A folktronica musician and his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother set off on a quixotic quest across the magnificent vistas of the steppes, stopping along the way to embrace the wondrous culture of their roots.
Showtimes
July 25
3:30 PM
Empty Nest
Empty Nest
Zhang Wei 2020 China 81 minutes
North American Premiere · Q&A with Zhang Wei

A charismatic salesman rekindles an elderly woman’s belief in love and happiness in this poignant tale of love and the search for meaning in the twilight years of life.
Showtimes
July 23
3:30 PM
Factory Boss
Factory Boss
Zhang Wei 2014 China 100 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
Sharp and thought-provoking, Factory Boss offers a rare glimpse into the lives of those caught in the crossfire of progress and profit.
Showtimes
July 22
12:00 PM
Flaming Cloud
Flaming Cloud
Liu Siyi 2023 China 107 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
World Premiere · Q&A with Liu Siyi

Director Liu Siyi’s stunning feature debut, a live-action spin on the classic fairy tale paradigm, is an exquisite homage to the Disney movies and Chinese folklore that her generation grew up on.
Showtimes
July 29
4:00 PM
Redemption with Life
Redemption with Life
Zhang Wei 2023 China 100 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
World Premiere

In the latest feature from NYAFF’s Filmmaker in Focus, Zhang Wei, a majestic motorcycle club snakes its way along a glorious Tibetan highway before a nested series of flashbacks reveals the plight that brought them on their profound journey.
Showtimes
July 28
3:30 PM
The Rib (Director’s Cut)
The Rib (Director’s Cut)
Zhang Wei 2018 China 143 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
Q&A with Zhang Wei

This breakthrough film, about a 32-year-old man trying to undergo reassignment surgery, illustrates the intense stigma and obstacles that the LGBT community must face in China, offering an inside look at both the marginalized and those who condemn them.
Showtimes
July 22
7:00 PM
A Woman
A Woman
Wang Chao 2022 China 118 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
North American Premiere

A factory worker in Mao’s China tows the party line on the surface, but in her personal life she extolls the virtues of resilience and resistance against institutionalized sexism and oppression. Wang Chao’s adaptation of Zhang Xiuzhen’s novel is told in sweeping episodes that eloquently describe the hidden hardships of the era.
Showtimes
July 23
1:00 PM
Hong Kong
A Light Never Goes Out
A Light Never Goes Out
Anastasia Tsang 2022 Hong Kong 103 minutes Cantonese with English subtitles
US Premiere · Q&A with Anastasia Tsang

A recent widow teams up with the young apprentice of her husband, one of Hong Kong’s premier neon sign artisans, to complete his magnum opus in this nostalgic paean to Hong Kong’s irrepressibly bright and vibrant spirit.
Showtimes
July 25
6:00 PM
Back Home
Back Home
Nate Ki 2023 Hong Kong 120 minutes Cantonese with English subtitles
World Premiere · Q&A with Nate Ki and Anson Kong

In this hallucinogenic horror opus, a young man who can see ghosts returns to his childhood home and is trapped in a waking nightmare.
Showtimes
July 25
9:00 PM
Everyphone Everywhere
Everyphone Everywhere
Amos Why 2023 Hong Kong 91 minutes Cantonese with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Director Amos Why (Far, Far Away, NYAFF 2022) brings his wry playfulness with narrative structure and media formalism to this pointed satire of postmodern communication and its resultant technological fallout.
Showtimes
July 20
3:30 PM
In Broad Daylight
In Broad Daylight
Lawrence Kan 2023 Hong Kong 106 minutes Cantonese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Lawrence Kan

Based on real events, this hard-hitting exposé of systematic failure and institutionalized corruption is a clarion call for compassion and respect without prejudice.
Showtimes
July 20
5:45 PM
Mad Fate
Mad Fate
Soi Cheang 2023 Hong Kong 108 minutes Cantonese with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Set in a surreal city of hookers, mystics, and psychopaths, Mad Fate is a crazed, morally complex addition to classic Cantonese mean-streets noir.
Showtimes
July 22
2:15 PM
Nomad (Director’s Cut)
Nomad (Director’s Cut)
Patrick Tam 1982 Hong Kong 94 minutes Cantonese with English subtitles
East Coast Premiere · New 4K Restoration

Four attractive souls, equal parts rich and working class, form a tragic romantic bond of ennui, anomie, absurdity, love, and violence in (Wong Kar Wai mentor) Patrick Tam’s genre-defying Hong Kong New Wave watershed.
Showtimes
July 21
3:45 PM
The Sunny Side of the Street
The Sunny Side of the Street
Lau Kok-rui 2022 Hong Kong, Malaysia 111 minutes Cantonese, Urdu with English subtitles
New York Premiere

After a fit of road rage gone south, Yat, a cantankerous cabbie with a checkered past, finds himself embroiled in the fate of a young Pakistani asylum-seeker. These two lost souls find they have more in common than they thought as they form a strong bond on a path of redemption paved with corruption and despair.
Showtimes
July 17
3:30 PM
Vital Signs
Vital Signs
Cheuk Wan-chi 2023 Hong Kong 100 minutes Cantonese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Cheuk Wan-chi & Louis Koo

This buddy mentor-mentee story is imbued with pathos set against the backdrop of harrowing thrill-a-minute emergency rescue operations. Louis Koo shines as the stoic yet soft-hearted ambulanceman supreme, who must face his own painful past while literally breaking his back to provide a good future for his charmingly precocious young daughter.
Showtimes
July 19
8:30 PM
The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell
The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell
Herman Yau 2023 Hong Kong 100 minutes Cantonese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Intro by Louis Koo

Genre maestro Herman Yau follows his highly successful showstopper The White Storm 2: Drug Lords (NYAFF 2019) with this even more hyperbolic and gritty entry in the gonzo super-cops vs. crazy crooks series.
Showtimes
July 20
8:30 PM
Japan
Presented with the support of the Japan Foundation

#Manhole
#Manhole
Kazuyoshi Kumakiri 2023 Japan 99 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
East Coast Premiere

A young executive is stuck in a desolate manhole amidst a driving downpour armed only with a trusty cell phone in this fantastical edge-of-your-seat thriller.
Showtimes
July 16
10:00 PM
December
December
Anshul Chauhan 2022 Japan 99 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Anshul Chauhan & Shogen

This riveting courtroom drama, written and directed by non-Japanese, wrestles with the controversial imprisonment of juvenile offenders and the gray areas of Japan’s criminal justice system, where the conviction rate is 99%.
Showtimes
July 24
6:00 PM
Egoist
Egoist
Daishi Matsunaga 2023 Japan 120 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
New York Premiere · Q&A with Daishi Matsunaga and Ryohei Suzuki

A poignant story of love, loss, self-sacrifice, and discovery, Daishi Matsunaga’s heralded new film is inspired by the seminal semi-autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama.
Showtimes
July 15
8:30 PM
Home Sweet Home
Home Sweet Home
Takumi Saitoh 2023 Japan 113 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Takumi Saitoh

A young family moves into a new house but the claustrophobic basement that controls the always-perfect temperature will soon ominously reflect all of their collective nightmares….
Showtimes
July 27
9:00 PM
A Hundred Flowers
A Hundred Flowers
Genki Kawamura 2022 Japan 104 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
New York Premiere

Genki Kawamura, a best-selling author (If Cats Disappeared From the World) and star producer (on anime mega-hits like Belle, Weathering With You, and Your Name) makes a poetic and visually stunning feature debut, adapted from his own novel.
Showtimes
July 16
12:15 PM
In Her Room
In Her Room
Chihiro Ito 2022 Japan 136 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Chihiro Ito & Satoru Iguchi

There are mysteries nested inside mysteries in this otherworldly erotic film, the directorial debut of veteran screenwriter Chihiro Ito (Crying Out Love in the Center of the World, Spring Snow), adapted from her own novel.
Showtimes
July 28
6:00 PM
Mayhem Girls
Mayhem Girls
Shinichi Fujita 2022 Japan 98 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
International Premiere

A small gaggle of previously unassociated high school girls, centered around the humbly charismatic Mizuho, form a tight-knit clique when their typically adolescent hormonal changes are suddenly manifested by… supernatural powers!
Showtimes
July 26
4:00 PM
Motherhood
Motherhood
Ryuichi Hiroki 2022 Japan 116 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
US Premiere

The details behind two generations of fraught mother-daughter relationships unfold following a news item about a 17-year-old girl’s attempted suicide. This intense psychodrama of emotional blackmail and betrayal has stirring twists and turns aplenty.
Showtimes
July 18
3:15 PM
Mountain Woman
Mountain Woman
Takeshi Fukunaga 2022 Japan/USA 100 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Takeshi Fukunaga

A rural woman whose village is in its second year of a devastating famine quest for survival gradually transforms into a journey to self-actualization in this haunting 18th-century-set tale of resilience in the face of harsh discrimination.
Showtimes
July 24
9:00 PM
Okiku and the World
Okiku and the World
Junji Sakamoto 2023 Japan 90 minutes Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Junji Sakamoto

This audacious, aesthetically brilliant new Edo-era period drama about two “manure men” who collect waste from outhouses achieves a perfect blend of potty humor, cutting social commentary, and budding romance.
Showtimes
July 16
2:30 PM
Kazakhstan
Mountain Onion
Mountain Onion
Eldar Shibanov 2022 Kazakhstan 90 minutes Russian, Kazakh, Mandarin with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Eldar Shibanov

Director Eldar Shibanov looks to the eyes of children for a wryly imaginative satire of adult foibles, filling his deceptively quotidian Kazakh boondocks with lively oddballs as colorful as their quirky costumes and other random devices.
Showtimes
July 29
1:30 PM
Malaysia
Abang Adik
Abang Adik
Jin Ong 2023 Malaysia 115 minutes Malay, Mandarin, Cantonese, Sign Language with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Jin Ong

The bond of two undocumented orphans is tested when one’s pent-up aggression leads to an unspeakable act. This remarkable award-winning debut offers a rare glimpse into Malaysian street life.
Showtimes
July 29
6:45 PM
Philippines
I Love You, Beksman
I Love You, Beksman
Percival Intalan 2022 Philippines 107 minutes Filipino with English subtitles
North American Premiere

When fashionably androgynous salon worker Dalia falls for a gorgeous beauty pageant contestant the truth finally comes out: He’s a straight guy with a queer eye! This brilliant riff on Romeo and Juliet wears campy corniness on its self-aware pop-art sleeve.
Showtimes
July 22
4:30 PM
12 Weeks
12 Weeks
Anna Isabelle Matutina 2023 Phillipines 105 minutes Filipino, English with English subtitles
International Premiere · Q&A with Anna Isabelle Matutina

The refreshingly multidimensional characters and complex interpersonal relationships in director Anna Isabelle Matutina’s bold debut cover all the points and counterpoints of the sensitive issue of abortion.
Showtimes
July 26
6:15 PM
Where Is the Lie?
Where Is the Lie?
Quark Henares 2023 Philippines 85 minutes Filipino, English with English subtitles
New York Premiere · Q&A with Quark Henares, EJ Jallorina & Royce Cabrera

This vibrantly Gen Z-skewing film with a humorous and hard-hitting script based on a real-life incident in the Philippines focuses on the charming, lovelorn target of a vile cyberbully (a star-making performance by luminous trans woman EJ Jallorina).
Showtimes
July 22
10:15 PM
Singapore
Geylang
Geylang
Boi Kwong 2022 Singapore 87 minutes Mandarin, Hokkien, English with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Boi Kwong & Jason Ho

A beautiful young prostitute’s sudden disappearance leads her foul-mouthed pimp, ragamuffin boyfriend, and a local lawyer on a gore-filled wild goose chase in this wild pop-art genre joyride.
Showtimes
July 21
6:00 PM
South Korea
Co-presented with Korean Cultural Center New York

Bear Man
Bear Man
Park Sung-kwang 2023 South Korea 97 minutes Korean with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Park Sung-woong is dazzling in two roles — as an embarrassingly goofy bear cub/man-child and a steely, well-dressed hit man — in this boisterous comedy.
Showtimes
July 19
3:30 PM
Dream
Dream
Lee Byeong-heon 2023 South Korea 125 minutes Korean with English subtitles
Centerpiece Film · International Premiere · Q&A with Lee Byeong-heon

A virtuoso soccer player (Park Seo-jun) and cynical producer (K-pop megastar IU) form a national football team made up of homeless individuals in acclaimed director Lee Byeong-heon’s highly anticipated blockbuster.
Showtimes
July 17
6:00 PM
Greenhouse
Greenhouse
Lee Sol-hui 2022 South Korea 100 minutes Korean with English subtitles
North American Premiere

This striking feature debut is a gripping slow-burn drama-cum-thriller about a caretaker for a disabled elderly couple coping with her own psychological troubles.
Showtimes
July 27
6:30 PM
Hail to Hell
Hail to Hell
Lim Oh-jeong 2022 South Korea 109 minutes Korean with English subtitles
North American Premiere

In this tar-black comedy, Na-mi and Sun-woo’s suicide pact is abruptly foiled when they find out that the bully who led them to this sorry fate is living happily ever after, far from their sleepy town.
Showtimes
July 29
9:30 PM
The Host
The Host
Bong Joon Ho 2006 South Korea 119 minutes Korean and English with English subtitles
This screening takes place on July 21 at 9pm in Damrosch Park

A young girl's family does everything in its power to rescue her from the clutches of a giant amphibious mutant—rendered as alternately chaotic, lethal, and clumsy—that has emerged from the Han River in Bong’s masterful monster movie. This film screens as part of Lincoln Center's Korean Arts Week.
Showtimes
July 21
9:00 PM
Killing Romance
Killing Romance
Lee Won-suk 2023 South Korea 106 minutes Korean with English subtitles
Opening Night Film · North American Premiere · Q&A on July 14 with Lee Won-suk & Lee Sun-kyun · Q&A on July 30 with Lee Won-suk, Gong Myoung, Lee Hanee & Lee Sun-kyun

A comic fantasia about a former superstar actress trapped in a toxic marriage with an egomaniacal tycoon, Killing Romance rounds up unforgettable performances that power up an electroshock of a tale, dancing between a love story, a musical, a murder plot, and a million things in between.
Showtimes
July 14
7:00 PM
July 30
1:30 PM
Phantom
Phantom
Lee Hae-young 2023 South Korea 133 minutes Korean and Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Lee Hanee

One of South Korea’s biggest hits of 2023, this brilliantly lensed, action-packed spy drama is set in 1933 Korea, during Japanese colonial rule, and features a cast of Korean stars speaking almost entirely in Japanese.
Showtimes
July 30
4:15 PM
Rebound
Rebound
Chang Hang-jun 2023 South Korea 120 minutes Korean with English subtitles
New York Premiere · Intro & Q&A with director Chang Hang-jun, Kim Taek, Jeong Jin-woon & Billy Acumen

Transcending the sports genre and eschewing the pitfalls of easy sentiment and melodrama, Chang Hang-jun’s Rebound elevates its premise with a singularly rousing screenplay, co-written by Kwon Sung-hui (The Spy Gone North, As One) and Kim Eun-hee (Netflix’s Kingdom).
Showtimes
July 15
5:30 PM
A Tour Guide
A Tour Guide
Kwak Eun-mi 2023 South Korea 94 minutes Korean with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Kwak Eun-mi

Han-young, a North Korean defector, gets a license to guide Chinese tourists thanks to the language skills she acquired as a refugee in China. She works diligently but faces many challenges, from coworker rivalry to assimilation, all while desperately searching for her missing brother.
Showtimes
July 19
6:00 PM
Taiwan
Co-presented with the support of Taipei Cultural Center in New York

The Abandoned
The Abandoned
Tseng Ying-ting 2022 Taiwan 128 minutes Mandarin, Taiwanese, Thai with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Tseng Ying-ting

A down-on-her-luck police detective uncovers the work of a vicious serial killer targeting illegal migrant workers in this transcendently insightful examination of the human psyche.
Showtimes
July 26
9:00 PM
Bad Education
Bad Education
Kai Ko 2023 Taiwan 77 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Taking over from his mentor Giddens Ko, Kai Ko delivers a kinetic (and often laugh-out-loud-against-our-better-judgment) delineation of good and evil with turbulent high stakes.
Showtimes
July 15
12:30 PM
Eye of the Storm
Eye of the Storm
Lin Chun-Yang 2023 Taiwan 118 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
International Premiere

Eye of the Storm is a gripping and poignant hospital thriller that explores the power of empathy and human resilience in the face of despair.
Showtimes
July 27
3:30 PM
Gaga
Gaga
Laha Mebow 2022 Taiwan 111 minutes Atayal, Mandarin, Taiwanese, English with English subtitles
East Coast Premiere · Q&A with Laha Mebow

Imbued with divinely tragicomic undertones, Gaga’s deceptively simple story allows the audience to bask in the glory of the Atayal tribe's unique culture and effervescent personalities.
Showtimes
July 18
8:30 PM
Marry My Dead Body
Marry My Dead Body
Cheng Wei-hao 2022 Taiwan 130 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
East Coast Premiere

A bit of folk magic lands a wannabe supercop betrothed to the ghost of a gay man who forces him to make a much needed attitude adjustment while also helping him solve a major drug case. This is full-throttle fun and high-voltage action all the way—and a much-needed sendup of homophobia.
Showtimes
July 17
9:00 PM
Miss Shampoo
Miss Shampoo
Giddens Ko 2023 Taiwan 116 minutes Mandarin with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Star auteur Giddens Ko adapts one of his own wild short stories into a raunchy gangster-romcom mash-up about a fledgling hair dresser who inadvertently saves the life of a gang boss, who falls for her.
Showtimes
July 23
6:00 PM
Thailand
Faces of Anne
Faces of Anne
Rasiguet Sookkarn, Kongdej Jaturanrasmee 2022 Thailand 116 minutes Thai with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Rasiguet Sookkarn

Anne wakes up on a strange island oppressed by scary caretakers and given a mission of survival against blood-crazed pagan demons in this surreal odyssey about all that it means to be a woman in the modern world.
Showtimes
July 28
9:15 PM
Kitty the Killer
Kitty the Killer
Lee Thongkham 2023 Thailand 120 minutes Thai with English subtitles
International Premiere · Q&A with Lee Thongkham & Vithaya Pansringarm

Built on comic book logic with its tongue firmly in cheek, this anarchic action-comedy is a rousing pastiche of Asian genre film tropes and references exuberantly topped off with a riotous Thai sense of humor for a rollicking good time.
Showtimes
July 21
8:30 PM
You & Me & Me
You & Me & Me
Wanweaw Hongvivatana, Weawwan Hongvivatana 2023 Thailand 121 minutes Thai with English subtitles
North American Premiere · Q&A with Weawwan Hongvivatana, Wanweaw Hongvivatana & Thitiya Jirapornsilp

This charmingly insightful directorial debut by real-life twins Weawwan and Wanweaw Hongvivatana puts a buoyantly ironic spin on summer romance.
Showtimes
July 15
2:30 PM
Vietnam
Glorious Ashes
Glorious Ashes
Bui Thac Chuyên 2022 Vietnam, France, Singapore 117 minutes Vietnamese with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Profound and lyrical, the first film in over a decade from cinematic poet Bui Thac Chuyen (Adrift) spins a mesmerizing tale of life, love, loneliness, and pyromania in yesteryear’s Mekong Delta.
Showtimes
July 16
5:00 PM
Diasporic Cinema
A-Town Boyz
A-Town Boyz
Eunice Lau 2023 USA 72 minutes English
World Premiere · Q&A with Eunice Lau

This edgy documentary focusing on three young men in Atlanta’s vibrant hip-hop scene is an illuminating time capsule of the immigrant struggle juxtaposed with cultural trends and socio-economic needs.
Showtimes
July 23
8:30 PM
The Effects of Lying
The Effects of Lying
Isher Sahota 2023 U.K. 85 minutes English
North American Premiere · Q&A with Aizzah Fatima, Isher Sahota & Jon Tarcy

With a smashing cast, the majority of whom just happen to be British Asian, The Effects of Lying cleverly milks the universal truisms of family dysfunction for both philosophical reflection and savage laughs galore.
Showtimes
July 18
6:00 PM
Shorts Programs
Narrative Shorts Showcase – Animation
Narrative Shorts Showcase – Animation
Various Directors 2022-2023 Various 119 minutes
A showcase of animated shorts from South Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, and the United States.
Showtimes
July 21
1:15 PM
Narrative Shorts Showcase – Live Action
Narrative Shorts Showcase – Live Action
Various Directors 2022-2023 155 minutes
A showcase of live-action shorts from China, South Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Japan, and the United States.
Showtimes
July 14
3:30 PM
Closing Night Film - To Be Announced!
Closing Night Film
Closing Night Film
2023
World Premiere

NYAFF Closing Night will conclude this year’s festival with a fabulous awards ceremony and the world premiere of a new all-star family-friendly animation blockbuster, to be revealed in a future announcement.
Showtimes
July 30
7:45 PM
Talks
All talks are free to NYAFF ticket and pass holders.