A Kid Like Jake

Jake is the only child of professional parents in the suburbs of New York City. He's five and his parents are looking for a primary school for him. The kind of primary school they'd like to send him to probably costs more than they can afford, and only takes a limited number of children anyway, so it's quite a source of anxiety.

One of the significant things about Jake is that he's quite effeminate for a small boy. He likes to dress up, has moderately long hair and likes pastel colours and movies about unicorns. His kindergarten principal suggests that his parents should emphasize this in their primary school applications, since schools like to think they're accepting a diverse range of students and that he might even get a scholarship as a token gender-diverse child.

A Kid Like Jake is about his parents response to this idea and the effect that this has on their relationship with each other, their friends and with Jake.The dilemma of how much emphasis to put on an aspect of your child's personality and identity is portrayed convincingly and is easy to relate to. Life can always throw something at you that you weren't expecting and it's interesting to see a couple dealing with the unexpected.It's quite a talky movie but it is entertaining and it's nice to look at, especially since Jake's parents are played by Claire Danes (Alex) and Jim Parsons (Greg). And although Alex and Greg don't agree on everything, it's not at all harrowing to watch.

Anne's rating 4/5 Ian's rating 2.5/5

Three Identical Strangers

A good documentary should tell you stuff you didn't know and be engaging while it does it. This film has a pretty interesting premise,  triplets separated at birth who grew up not knowing they were triplets, who meet at the age of nineteen.

Once this basic scenario has been played out, the story just gets more interesting. It becomes apparent that the adoption agency hid the fact that these children were triplets from their adoptive parents. I won't go into the reasons now, because you may wish to watch the movie yourself, but it's fair to say that your jaw will be on the floor quite often.

We meet the two surviving triplets, and many of their friends and relatives. We meet people who worked for the adoption agency (which specialised in Jewish babies) and child psychologists and researchers.

Adoption is much rarer in the twenty-first century than it was in the nineteen-sixties, at least in the western world and is much more regulated and transparent. Once you've watched this movie you'll probably think this is a good thing.

Anne's rating 3.5/5

The Insult

Two political Lebanese courtroom dramas in one festival sounds like more than a coincidence.

The Insult opens with a Christian Phalangist Party rally celebrating election victory. Tony Hanna, who owns a car repair garage is a keen party follower. The next day he gets into an altercation with Yasser the Palestinian foreman/engineer doing renovation work on the apartment building, which quickly escalates into Tony smashing a new drain pipe and Yasser calling him a "fucking prick" (or some Arabic equivalent). The situation escalates between the two stubborn and proud men leading to a worse insult ("I wish Ariel Sharon had wiped you all out"), a punch, court cases and a national political drama, with rock throwing and burning tyres.

The court case is a device to provide not only more tension between the two sides but also allows explanation of the past (including Black September and  the Damour massacre). Tony's lawyer, in particular, is an even more ardent supporter of the Maronite Christian cause than Tony is. He resents that Palestinian suffering at the hands of Zionism shelters them from criticism and sees the case as yet another opportunity to undermine their reputation (to what end is unclear as there is no way that Lebanon can ever get rid of Palestinians, since that depends on the Israelis).

The Insult makes the point that what we identify with gives us strength but also makes us a target. Also that emphasising one difference prevents us from seeing what makes us similar in other ways. It does a good job of explaining a small part of Lebanon's history. The personal tension between the two men is very well depicted with Yasser smouldering quietly and stiffly while Tony's agitation is more physical. Similarly the legal dispute is in the long tradition of cinematic courtroom tactics.

As the lawyers wrangle over the case the two men at the centre of it begin to feel left out and try solve their differences outside the courtroom. At about this point there are a couple of scenes that don't fit with the plot and how Yasser and Toni appear to feel at that moment. Both scenes have dramatic appeal and from that point of view I can see why they are in the film, but both feel jarringly out of place at that point. One, involving the President of Lebanon, might have fitted better earlier in the story and the other involving a car that won't start perhaps nearer the end.

Politics in Lebanon is a high tension game. A country which divides its electorates not only geographically but also between 18 religious groups. Where political parties have militias. A country which has had a civil war. On top of that Lebanon has hosted refugee camps for 70 years and where at the moment 1 in 3 people are refugees from conflicts in neighbouring Syria, Israel or Palestine. Neighbouring countries that show no sign of accepting their refugees back. There is no lack of bitterness and no lack of causes to join. Despite that The Insult is a hopeful film. There are an abundance of peace makers among the minor characters: Yasser's boss and his wife, Tony's pregnant and photogenic wife (played by Rita Hayek) and the President of Lebanon.

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Ian's rating 4.5/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5

The World Is Yours

This year's French comedy is the crime caper The World is Yours which, strangely, has two French titles Le monde est à toi and Le monde ou rien. If you want a nice, polite, politically correct French farce you should move along, there is nothing to see here.

Our protagonist longs to go straight and dreams of opening a Mr. Freeze franchise in North Africa and owning a small house with an outdoor pool. Unfortunately, his family and friends are the criminal underworld of the local Parisian housing estate and his career so far has been committing, aiding and abetting crime. Even when he thinks he has saved enough for a down payment on the franchise his mother's gambling habit intervenes. So he reluctantly accepts the job of driving to Spain to pick some drugs from a Scottish drug lord. Accompanied by his mother's dopy ex-boyfriend, 2 stoned gangsters both called Mohamed and a gold digging semi-girlfriend what could possibly go wrong? And who are you going to call when things do go wrong? Well, mummy of course (played in top scenery chewing form by Isabelle Adjani).

While not the funniest or craziest film at the festival, it has a flare that is missing in the rest of the films I saw in this year's festival. Reminiscent of both Tarantino and Sexy Beast, The World is Yours has us rooting for the underdog as he digs himself deeper and deeper into trouble.

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Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 2.5/5

Disobedience

I went to Disobedience because I enjoyed the book, which isn't always a good idea but worked out all right on this occasion. It probably helps that it's quite a few years since I read the book, so I wasn't hung up on the details.

Ronit  (played by Rachel Weisz) is  the central character. She is a rabbi's daughter and grew up in London in an orthodoxe Jewish community but now lives a secular life in New York City working as a photographer. Having heard the news of her father's death, she heads back to London, where she finds out that Dovit (who was her father's spiritual protege) and Esti (her best friend with whom she had a clandestine lesbian relationship when they were teenagers) are now married to each other which is a big surprise. The other big surprise waiting is that her father has left his house to the local synagogue and not to her.

Despite Esti being married, she and Ronit's feelings for each other haven't diminished with time. So the story is about what effect that has on each of their adult lives and how Ronit comes to terms with the death of a man she loved, but from whom she was estranged. It's a very tense movie and the tension comes from the impossibility of having or acknowledging a lesbian relationship in such a religious community. Disobedience is a fairly satisfying watch despite everything in it (including the weather) being gray or brown.

Anne's rating 3/5.

Ava

Ava is an sixteen year old high school student in Tehran. She plays the violin, hangs out with her friends, experiments with make up and has a bit of thing for her friend's brother, with whom she plays duets. The high school she goes to is girls only and somewhat repressive. A harmless afternoon spent with the aforementioned brother results in her being taken by her mother to the gynaecologist for a virginity assessment, which she's naturally pretty upset about, particularly when she discovers that her mother was pregnant when she got married. Her supportive and seemingly fairly liberal parents are suddenly part of the repressive and paranoid regime that operates at her school.

So Ava the movies paints a picture of a society that most Westerners are uncomfortable with. We mourn that Ava has to go through what she does, and that her parents are complicit in putting her through it. Unfortunately, Ava the girl isn't a very charismatic character and the whole film is a bit grim. Watch the trailer so you get the gist, but don't bother to go to the film.

Anne's rating 1/5

Capharnaüm

Capharnaüm or Capernaum is a confusing title. Merriam Webster defines capharnaum as a confused jumble or a place marked by a disorderly accumulation of objects. While chaos is an apt description of the situations the title really doesn't do justice to this political film about the effect on children of poverty and poor parenting decisions.

Ostensibly Capharnaüm is a courtroom drama as approximately 12-year-old Zain sues his parents in a Lebanese court. But this is just a framing device for telling the story in an extended flashback. The story of a few weeks of Zain's life and family and by extension the story of the bottom rungs of Lebanese society, especially its children. Zain's parents can't remember what year he was born. He has a lot of siblings and being the eldest still at home he feels responsible for the others, especially his 11-year-old sister Sahar. The family lives in a small, dirty apartment owned by a local shopkeeper who has the hots for Sahar and for whom Zain works for as a delivery boy. Zain's mother runs a small-time drug smuggling operation involving the kids, who also sell juice to commuters at rush hour. Zain's father's occupation is not mentioned.

As bad as the initial situation is it gets worse when Zain runs away from home in anger after an unsuccessful attempt to protect Sahar. Eventually, Zain ends up living on the streets trying to look after a refugee toddler when its mother disappears, presumably arrested.

Much of the cast are not previously professional actors and Zain, in particular, who is in almost every scene pulls off an amazing performance. His character's resourcefulness, cynicism, anger and compassion drive the story. While the subject matter is depressing, this is not really a depressing story. Zain's go-with-your-gut instinct approach to life is too much fun to watch. I can only dream of coping with the bad things in life with the aplomb that he does.

Other reviews are divided into those that say that Capharnaüm is too sentimental and emotionally manipulative and those that say it is unsentimental and gritty (and in defence point out that emotional manipulation is at the core of filmmaking). I wonder if the divide is actually between those that were made uncomfortable and wanted to dis the film and its message versus those who accept the dual attack on parents and the system that leads to poverty and refugees. I presume that director Nadine Labaki (who has a bit part in this film and previously started in 2008's Caramel) made this film for a Lebanese audience, a country with 4 million Lebanese and 2 million refugees (mostly from Syria). We are not used to hearing from Lebanese about refugees, which contrasts with the endless reports crisis caused by 1 million Syrian and African refugees arriving in the EU with its population of 500 million.

Ian's rating 5/5 Anne's rating 4/5

Foxtrot

It was back to Israel for Foxtrot, but this time for was a Jewish Israeli film, Like Wajib it was a family drama, but unlike Wajib it features Jewish Israelis and we're talking a funeral rather than a wedding.

Foxtrot centres on a middle-aged Israeli (Michael) who lives with his wife  (Dafna) and two young adult children (Jonathon and Alma) in a high-rise apartment in Tel Aviv. Jonathon is currently serving in the IDF and is stationed in the north of Israel. The film opens with a knock on the apartment door and it's two soldiers, announcing that Jonathon has been killed. They're coy about the details, and suggest that viewing the body is unnecessary and undesirable. They act with impressive efficiency - you get a sense of the IDF being an unstoppable well-oiled machine

So we view the family's different reactions to the news, get to meet a few other relatives and get to know people a bit better. Michael's mother is a holocaust survivor who's losing her memory, Michael served in the IDF himself.

Then the first plot twist - the soldiers are back, announcing they got things wrong, and although a Jonathon Feldman has died, it isn't their son. So now there are different kinds of angst to go through. Initially Michael and Alma are fighting, later they find some  mutual consolation in their joint confusion and anger.

Then it's off to the north of Israel and seeing Jonathon's  day-to-day existence. He and three fellow solider live in a container and monitor an isolated checkpoint. There's very little going on but there's some drama when they're inspecting a carful of young Arabs and they mistake a beer can for a grenade and open fire, killing all the occupants. In an almost surreal scene, the ever-efficient IDF sends a massive truck with a bulldozer on the back and the car and everyone in it is buried
 forthwith.And then we have a second plot twist which you can see for yourself if you go to the film.

One of Foxtrot's main messages is that serving in the IDF is bad for you - mentally and physically. You get caught up in. it, and it changes you forever. A sub-message is that surviving the holocaust blights your relationships. And while these are not the cheeriest messages, it was a pretty engrossing watch. Foxtrot was directed by Samuel Moaz who directed Lebanon (set inside an Israeli tank in the 1982 war with Lebanon) which we have also seen,

Anne's rating 3.5/5

Girl

Girl features a teenage boy in the process of becoming a girl. She's called Lara (previously Victor) and has just moved cities along with very supportive father and much younger brother. She's been provisionally accepted into the local and very prestigious ballet school. She's taking puberty-delaying medication and will soon be old enough to take hormone replacement therapy. A raft of supportive medical professionals are accompanying Lara and her Dad on this painful journey.

It's hard to think of a more physically and emotionally demanding course of action than changing

gender while attending a ballet academy which is physically and emotionally demanding in itself. So watching the film, we're experiencing the journey even if we don't understand it.  I imagine that's how Lara's father felt - that he was experiencing the journey form the outside. Lara clearly wants to be a girl very badly and she dislikes her male body and is prepared to go to great lengths to change it. I can support that want and that aim but I don't understand it. I don't know why she feels that way, and I was hoping that Girl might give me an insight and it really didn't, so that was a bit disappointing. Perhaps it's a bit much to expect a teenager who is having hard time to articulate why they want something so badly. There are times that I want what I think being a physically imposing man would give me (especially when I'm in a business meeting) but I don't want to be a man. I'm interested in why someone would want to change sex rather than change they way they're treated, especially when transgender people aren't treated in exactly the same way as cis-gender people.

I'm digressing from the film itself which is very, very well acted and compelling. It is somewhat traumatic, and I didn't read about the self harm aspect in the NZIFF programme because Girl hadn't been rated by the censor when the paper version was printed. If I had known I may not have gone.

When I was talking to a friend about the festival and what we'd seen, he said "the best film that I saw that you probably shouldn't see because it's too upsetting was The Cleaners" And that's how I feel about Girl - a good film that you probably shouldn't see.

So no rating on this one. I could give a zero because cleaning the oven would have been more fun, but that would be denigrating the acting and the film-making in a most uncharitable way.

Wajib- The Wedding Invitation

Like "The Reports on Sarah and Saleem", Wajib is a film that features Arab Israelis. A family story set in Nazareth, it uses the familiar scenario of adult child visiting the family home to illustrate the life of Arab citizens in Israel.

Shadi is an Arab Israeli architect who lives in Italy. His father (Abu Shadi) and his sister live in Nazareth, which is where he grew up. His sister is about to get married, and Shadi is home for the wedding. Their mother lives in America having left her husband and Israel when Shadi and his sister were children.

Most of the  film takes place over the course of a day. Shadi and his father are driving around Nazareth hand-delivering wedding invitations. As result we get to meet many of their family and friends and see inside many homes. Shadi and Abu Shadi have lots of opportunity to talk while they're in the car. As is often the case when you spend time with family, they find each other both irritating and endearing. Shadi is trying to give up smoking, and Abu Shadi, who has heart trouble and is supposed to be giving up, shows no interest in doing so. We learn that Shadi's mother leaving her husband continues to be an embarrassment, and we learn that Shadi was sent to Italy when he got into some political trouble when he was younger. He's much more anti-Israeli than his Dad ,and is outraged when he discovers his father is proposing to invite one of his Jewish friends to the wedding. We learn that Arab tradition is still important, and that delivering wedding invitations in Nazareth is  a parking nightmare and that you'll be forced to drink enough coffee to keep you awake for a week.

Wajib is a pretty gentle film that's illustrative without packing much of an emotional punch. The characters are like-able and they have a relatively pleasant lifestyle compared to their counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza but there are constraints  to that lifestyle

Saleh Bakri who is an Israeli-born Arab himself, rejects the Israeli label, preferring to describe himself as a Palestinian - you can read about that.here.  Saleh has been described as the sexiest man in Israel and if you're looking for a reason to go and see the film, an extended opportunity to admire him is a valid one. There's a nice  inter-generational contrast between Shadi the son who wears a floral shirt and his hair in a topknot and Abu Shadi who wears muted colours and a flat cap.

Anne's rating 2.5/5

Mega Time Squad

Mega Time Squad is a slightly fanciful tale set in Thames. Antony Tennet plays John, the feckless employee of local crime boss Shelton. John is prevailed upon to stage a heist against the local triad, and he agrees in order to impress Shelton's sister. A Chinese bracelet stolen along with a tyre-full of money gives John the ability to duplicate himself and travel backwards in time, and this leads to many a comic moment and general silliness. There are car chases, guns, violence and swearing but this film  comes across as benign and life-affirming.

Mega Time Squad was sequestered in the incredibly strange section of the film festival programme, which seems like a potentially audience-limiting decision. While not as main-stream or high budget as, say, Sione's Wedding, it was at least on par with How To Meet Girls From a Distance and shared many qualities with both those films - especially how the characters talk, behave and interact. A more accurate description than incredibly strange would be fast-paced , off-beat comedy. Despite the film festival's categorization, it's coming out on general release later in the year.

Director/Writer Tim van Dammen says "Mega Time Squad celebrates Kiwi-ness, particularly the way Kiwis speak" and that was a very enjoyable aspect of the film. The scenario of the self-confident obnoxious individual who surrounds himself with  self-effacing conflict-averse characters is one we're all familiar with  and Jonny Brugh does an excellent job playing the obnoxious Shelton.  I liked the escapist element and the recognisable setting. We've spent a lot of time in Thames and it's always fun to see somewhere you're familiar with on screen.

It's fair to say I loved Mega Time Squad. I really can't think about it without smiling

Anne's rating 4.5/5. Ian's rating 3/5

Woman at War

Hella is a much-loved choirmaster and secret eco-warrior. She also has a 3 piece band that appears wherever she is to provide a soundtrack for her life and when they aren't available there are 3 Ukranian women in national costume to sing instead. These are slightly surreal aspects to Woman at War, this year's Icelandic comedy. Hella's eco-warrior activities mostly revolve around shorting out high-voltage powerlines feeding a steel (or aluminium) plant. Her life is complicated when an application to adopt a Ukranian orphan four years earlier is suddenly accepted. Our quixotic heroine is undaunted by the forces of the government and nature.

This is a laid back, light hearted shaggy dog story, which will teach you a couple of new uses for dead sheep and how to shoplift a typewriter. There is also an unfortunate Spanish speaking cycle tourist who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time and you will see and hear a Helicon.

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Ian's rating 3.5/5

Border

Tina works in customs at a Swedish ferry terminal. She is a valuable member of the team because she has an amazing sense of smell. Tina is particularly ugly. One day she processes a passenger she finds fascinating and the attraction is mutual. This has a knock-on effect on Tina's relationships with both her boyfriend and her dad. Tina, who has been bullied all her life, blooms as a result of this encounter. Border is another film that should have been categorised in the NZIFF's Incredibly Strange section and I can't say much more about what happens without giving too much away.

Border is a film about the marginalised in society and different strategies for those people to deal with the rest of society. It is also brings some old Scandinavian ideas up to date, by incorporating them into a modern story.

After reading other reviews I see that some reviewers are shocked by seeing ugly people having sex on screen.

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Ian's rating 3.5/5

The Ancient Woods

 Nature documentaries are a staple of television channels, so obviously you don't have to go to the theatre to see them. The best nature documentaries provide a kind of immersive experience, and are free from annoying voice-overs or ad breaks. They should be the next best thing to being there and sometimes they're better than being there because a camera can go where humans can't.

The Ancient Woods takes the viewer to Lithuania, where there's an incredible diversity of wildlife. Moose and mice, owls and vultures, snakes and deer, crows and capercaillies, ants and bees. The footage is stunning, and often quite funny. It was a little slow but the I have forgiven the slow bits because the good bits were so good. There was very clever camera positioning, and I enjoyed being fearful for the life of the dormouse until I realised that snake that was pursuing it was very tiny.

Being in the woods, even vicariously, is definitely an immersive experience, especially when it comes to sound. It seems European forests are noisy places, and some of the creatures make surprising sounds. When I went to the exhibition at Zealandia and saw the animated moa models and heard them growling, I thought this was completely fanciful but now that I've seen the western capercaillie  (an incredible bird that's like a cross between a turkey and a cassowary, pictured below) I think that moas may well have growled.

I think on the whole I prefer my stunning visuals to be accompanied by stirring music but I can see that without its current soundtrack The Ancient Woods would be missing something important.

Anne's rating 3.5/5

The Reports on Sarah and Saleem

We've seen quite a few movies about Palestinians who live in the West Bank (Paradise Now, A Wedding in Ramallah, Omar, Private, The Zoo) but few about Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. So  The Reports on Sarah and Saleem broke some new ground in terms of both that and interaction between Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens.

So in this movie, Sarah is a Jewish Israeli cafe owner, and Saleem is a Palestinian who delivers croissants to her cafe. They move in different circles but they both live in Jerusalem. They both have distracted spouses - Sarah's husband David is an officer in the IDF and is often away and Saleem's wife Bisan is pregnant and is declining sex because it's bad for the baby. So they have motive, proximity and opportunity for the affair they embark on. The bakery van provides a handy venue. You could say their affair was bound to lead to trouble but it seemed harmless enough initially.

The event that really starts the trouble is a late-night trip to Bethlehem. Despite the plan to pretend Sarah is foreign by having her only speak in English, she's rumbled as Jewish and some unhappy Arabs not only give Saleem a hard time, they report him to the authorities, and things escalate from there.

Any affair has potentially troublesome ramifications and I guess the plot revolves around the many ramifications that this affair had, in this politically and racially charged part of the world. Many of them were unexpected, and I was never bored and never knew quite what was going to happen next. This movie is quite woman-centric for a Middle-Eastern film and I liked how Sarah and Bisan didn't just roll over and do what their husbands wanted. I liked how interesting and well-acted some of the lesser characters were - Saleem's lawyer Maryam and the bald Israeli security guy in particular..

Jerusalem looked beautiful as always and the similarities and differences between Jewish and Arab Israelis were nicely highlighted.

Anne's rating 4.5/5 Ian's rating 4.5/5

The Guilty

The detectives who feature in crime novels, particularly Scandinavian ones, are usually troubled souls. They're a bit too devoted to their jobs, and as a result their relationships fail. They're a bit prone to cutting corners to get a result in a case, and so are often in trouble with their bosses but they inspire complete loyalty from their work partners.

Asger Holm, the star character in The Guilty is just such a Scandinavian police officer. He's been suspended from regular police duties since he shot a criminal and has been reassigned to working in the call centre answering 112 emergency calls. A routine evening in the centre is coming to an end when a woman who has been abducted by her husband phones in and we see Asger's detective and organisational skill at work despite him never leaving the desk.

Asger is a huge character and he features in every scene. He's compassionate and thoughtful, persuasive, determined  and unwavering. He's a classically flawed hero and he is totally worth watching - both for his character and his hugely expressive and largely flawless face.

The film is very clever, with the plot detail  unfolding with each phone call between Asger and the woman  (Iben), and Asger and Iben's daughter, a Asger and the staff who dispatch offices and cars around the city . (The instant nature of the dispatches is truly impressive if you've ever been made aware of New Zealand's rationing of police resources). Despite being filmed entirely in the call centre, the Guilty keeps you on the edge of your seat, as a thriller should, and the realisation that things are not exactly as you first thought is nicely gradual.

Anne's rating 4/5, Ian's rating 4.5/5

Good Manners

Good Manners is misfiled outside the NZIFF's Incredibly Strange section. It is an urban Brazillian horror film among other things, which starts with pregnant Ana interviewing nannies in an upmarket apartment. She hires Clara who moves in to work as a housekeeper prior to to the birth. The impassive Clara contrasts with the flighty, impulsive, Zumba obsessed Ana. Despite the difference in social class and personality the two develop a close bond, which holds them together when odd things start to happen.

When the story of Ana and Clara came to an end and I expected the credits to roll, but there is jump of 8-10 years and a new plot starts. Good Manners is like a double feature, two stories back to back, with Clara as the linking character. This time Clara is in charge, running her own pharmacy and looking after her son.

I didn't know there were home ultrasound kits

There is more humour than horror in Good Manners and some stylish set pieces. It is also one of a surprising number of films at this year's festival which are either lesbian centric or with lesbian content.

Ian's rating 3/5

Rafiki

Your dad and my dad are rivals, is it Okay for us to be friends? This is the first question confronting Kena and Ziki in Rafiki. Their fathers are rival candidates in the upcoming election. But the initial attraction between the skateboard riding, soccer playing Kena and Ziki with her huge earrings and pink and blue dreds, moves onto kissing. Homosexuality is illegal in Kenya and the local pastor regularly preaches against it, so coming out as a lesbian is dangerous. But the two girls can't keep away from each other.

Rafiki is a simple story set in a colourful Nairobi suburb. The passion the two girls have for each other is communicated by their recklessness. The charm of the film is not only stubbornness of Kena contrasting with the flirty Ziki but also the colourful exotic setting (to non-Africans) but also the directness and emotional expressiveness of the dialogue. I was left with slight disappointment at the end at how little plot there was, a feeling of is-that-all-there-is? But remember that this is an issue film which wants to communicate is message in a positive feel-good way rather than a complex drama.

The film is adapted from a Ugandan short story and has been banned in Kenya.

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Ian's rating 3.5/5 Anne's rating 3/5

Holiday

Director Isabella Eklöf's Holiday is set in the bright sun and colours of a Turkish resort town. Bikinis, swimming pools, clubwear, nightclubs and colourful amusement parks. It is a film about power relationships.

Sascha is the trophy girlfriend of Michael, a Danish gangster more than twice her age. From Michael's point of view, there isn't much of a downside to this relationship. For Sascha, it is more of a trade-off. Endless leisure time and material benefits on one side and verbal, sexual and physical abuse on the other. Is it a reasonable trade-off?

Michael, family and close colleagues are on holiday at a coastal Turkish villa. Consequently, Sascha is isolated from anyone outside Michael's circle of friends, with only casual holiday contacts which she certainly can't rely on to counterbalance Michael et al. Understandably Sascha takes a cautious, timid and mostly passive role in proceedings though her most dramatic act is certainly decisive as is the subsequent decision. Sascha's passivity and her lack of lines leave it very much up to us to conjecture what is going on behind the sunglasses.

While ostensibly filmed from a Male Gaze perspective, the camera often shifts to view Sascha and what is happening to her in a non-glamourous way. There are also plenty of scenes to disturb (including a rape). There were 2 walkouts in the showing I was at (one loudly telling us what he thought).

My initial reaction was that the message of this message was that women should burn their pushup bras, miniskirts, bikinis and high heels and put on their baggy overalls and comfortable shoes. But on further consideration perhaps Isabella Eklöf wants us to consider our relationships and the relationships of those we might judge in all their facets, trade-offs and consequences. What do people get from their relationships? What is the downside? How easy is it for them to get out of situations?

After reading other reviews, I see I am not alone at finding this a difficult film to process.

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Ian's rating 2.5/5

And Breathe Normally

Social commentary through drama is the sort of film we expect from Ken Loach. But And Breathe Normally is by Ísold Uggadóttir and therefore set in Iceland, which probably looks pretty bleak for much of the year and where buildings and other trappings of human life tend to look out of place.

Lara is trying to improve her life. A life which comes with baggage, including tattoos, debts, people she is trying to avoid, a flat she can't afford and a 4 or 5 year old son. She is just starting a job as border guard at Keflavík International Airport. Anxious to impress on the first day on passport control, she notices an imperfection in a French passport of a woman heading for Canada. The woman, Adja from Guinea-Bissau, is also a solo mother with a daughter in Canada and completely out of her comfort zone in Iceland. She is sent to a prison, and then to a downtown boarding house for people awaiting asylum decisions or deportation. Meanwhile, Lara has a major crisis of her own, which leads her to cross paths with Adja again.

Some suspension of belief is required here and there in order to take the plot seriously and to engineer the ending that Ísold Uggadóttir is aiming for, but And Breathe Normally is none-the-worse for that.

And Breathe Normally champions the cause of those on the fringes of society and those who feel they have to break rules when those rules are designed for the benefit of others. There is also a sly, casual promotion of the sisterhood and a super cute kid.

Ian's rating 3.5/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5

Shoplifters

Shoplifters is the most popular film in Japan so far this year. It also won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

The Shoplifters are a family that supplements their menial jobs with petty crime. One night they come across a little girl who is cold, hungry and apparently abandoned. They notice her bruises and decide to informally adopt her without involving the authorities who might ask awkward questions about their criminal activities. For a while things work. Summer arrives, the family goes to the beach. Everything looks good until the wheels fall off and the police get involved.

Shoplifters is a gentle comedy that humanises a bunch of people at the margin of society. It helps that it stars two very cute little children. It also raises an awkward question about what should authorities do with a child that has been illegally adopted or stolen but brought up very well by parents who acquired the child illicitly. What is the best for that child?

I noticed that the Society to Prevent Shoplifting is mentioned in the credits.

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Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 3/5

Beirut

So far this is the most gripping film of the 2018 NZIFF. A spy noir. Unusually for an American spy movie, Beirut is more John le Carré than Jason Bourne. This is the movie where you don't want to miss a line of dialogue. Working out everyone's motives and relationships is important.

Beirut sets the scene in 1972 at a party thrown by American diplomat Mason Skiles at his mansion in the hills above Beirut. The party is gatecrashed at the front door by the CIA and Mossad and at the back door by gunmen and his wife is killed. Jumping forwards to 1982 and Skiles has left the diplomatic service and is working as a negotiator in a labour dispute and is reputed to be an alcoholic. But an American has been kidnapped in Beirut and Mason is asked to come out of retirement and negotiate with the kidnappers. Mason arrives in a very different Beirut, the Lebanese Civil War occurred while he was away and everyone thinks that Israel is about to invade. Mason not only has to work out what the kidnappers want and what he needs to do to get the kidnapped man released but also deal with factions at the U.S. Embassy who have their own priorities, which include encouraging the Israelis to invade.

This is a movie that may reward a second viewing as I am not sure I picked up on all the minor plot lines, particularly for characters who suddenly reappear after being absent for much of the film. There are no flashy stunts, our hero knows what to say to achieve something rather than how to leap between tall buildings.

The has-been that everyone has written off but gets to make a comeback is a staple lead character in Hollywood movies. It is a way of getting sympathy with the hero and separating them from the other characters in the story.

That said this film is not without faults. There are at least 9 significant characters, some of whom don't get much screen time. So most of the characters are pretty thin, but it is their motives that are important rather than their personality. All but 2 of these people work for governments (or the P.L.O.), so their personal stories take back seat while they do their jobs. For a film set in Beirut there are no significant Lebanese characters and in typical Hollywood-fashion Arabs are portrayed as violent, uncivilised characters always out for revenge and to be killed with impunity. While the Israelis are not the good guys in this film at least they get some minor parts, and there is disillusionment with the American government.

Beirut was filmed in Tangier, Morocco. Which apparently has a significant number of half-demolished buildings.

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Ian's rating 4.5/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5

Bisbee ’17

In 1917 Bisbee, Arizona was an important centre of copper mining. The Industrial Workers of the World trade union set up a branch in Bisbee signed up several hundred members and in May put a set of demands to the mining companies. The demands were turned down and the union called a strike which began at the end of June and involved most of the miners. Two weeks later the local sheriff and company executives signed up 2,200 deputies and provided them with lists of men to arrest. The next morning 2000 men were rounded up (not all of the miners) and marched to the local baseball park and kept under armed guard. Those that weren't union members and agreed to go back to work were allowed to leave (700 did). The rest were loaded onto cattle cars and the train took them 300km out of town where they were unloaded and told that they would be killed if they tried to return to their homes in Bisbee. When asked what law he was using to justify his action, Sheriff Wheeler said no law, but he'd do it again.

This event is known as the Bisbee Deportation. Bisbee ’17 is a documentary about the centenary of the Bisbee Deportation and how the current population feels about it. It is difficult to know how representative the view expressed were but they ran the full range from unequivical support for the vigillantee action to support for the union and deportees. The centenary includes a re-enactment of the events (except that while the baseball park still exists the railway doesn't).

The documentary concentrates on trying to show the difference between the sort of men who Sheriff Wheeler signed up as deputies and those who were run out of town (lots of Hispanic, Eastern European and Italian names). This wasn't just a union busting action it was also an attempt to get rid of the "wrong sort of American".

The documentary is a very easy watch but left me with far more questions than answers: What happened to the deportees? What happened to the vigillantees? There are a couple of casual mentions of a court case but the documentary itself stops with the events of 12 July 1917. Perhaps they are planning a sequel, in the meantime Wikipedia can provide some answers.

No references are made to current politics in America.

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Ian's rating 2.5/5

Keep the Change

How do people learn how to interact with other people? Is it by imitation and seeing what works, and gradually getting better at picking the right thing to do? Is it by applying a process of logic in every situation? Most of us do it so naturally that we forget that we had to learn how at some point in our lives. Sometimes we feel like we were born knowing this stuff. Social interaction is such an intrinsic part of being human that people who have trouble with social interactions seem so alien.

In Keep the Change, David is a young autistic man who tries very hard to seem cool with his endless supply of jokes. He is supported by his rich parents but runs foul of the law by telling a pig joke to a New York policeman. The judge orders him to join an autism support group. He is utterly contemptuous of the weirdos. But finds himself paired up with the extrovertive Sarah who tells him that she finds him "really smoking hot, and so sexy".

With a cast of non-professional autistic actors (I hope they did get paid!), Keep the Change concentrates more on how these autistic people get on with each other rather than how they interact with non-weirdos. Which probably make this a more satisfying film.

It also shows New York as an onion. A little group of autistic people within the Jewish community, which, while big enough to have its own class hierarchy, is itself is a small group within the metropolis. All these groups can conduct their lives with little contact with the millions of other New Yorkers.

The film touches on the dangers of telling people that they are better than they really are and also the dangers of being honest with people who have delusions about themselves and their abilities, but it doesn't provide a solution to either issue.

And for those of us who do find dealling with other people a bit challenging from time to time, it reminds us that we can still have a life.

Did I tell you the story about the Jew who wanted a divorce because his wife joined the Police?

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Ian's rating 3/5

Thelma

Thelma is starting university in Oslo. She is from a strict, religious, rural family. So this is a culture shock. Though having an epileptic-style fit when a pretty girl sits next to her in the crowded library is an even bigger shock. The doctor who treats her is pretty sure it isn't an epileptic fit, suggesting psychogenic seizures. No-one notices the simultaneous bird strikes on the windows.

The contrast between the clean, modern Scandinavian university, the student world of Facebook and iPhones and the unnatural events make them more startling. These students even find the idea of fellow students who believe in God difficult to process. They expect things to be rational.

Thelma is a quiet, reserved girl, trying to live up to her parents' expectations and her religious upbringing, while also trying to fit in to student life. Underneath that reserved exterior there are alot of emotions wrangling for control: confusion, fear, lust, guilt. The more she tries be unnoticed the more she attracts attention to herself. It's interesting to contrast the timid Thelma with the much brasher and younger Mia in Blue My Mind though both girls are physically similar; pale, slim with long hair, placid expressions and perfect skin.

Thelma evolves from being the victim of her fits to being in control and in the penultimate scene, she strides from her family home in triumph.

There is enough ambiguity in the film to view what happens as either supernatural with Themla's telekinetic powers being successfully repressed during most of her childhood and resurfacing at university or as Thelma's imagination, dreams and unreliable guilt-ridden childhood memories.

Equally the final scene, which on the face of it feels like a cop-out in this otherwise dark, sinister Scandinavian movie, could also be interpreted in a couple of more sinister ways.

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Ian's rating 4/5

Leave No Trace

Will and Tom live off-the-grid in a forest outside Portland, Oregon. Or you could say they are camping or you could say they are homeless. Will is a war veteran who is either not keen on being around people or prefers living indoors (or both), which puts him offside with "the authorities". Tom is his "home" schooled teenage daughter. Their idyllic lifestyle is upset when the park rangers and police arrive and they get processed by the "System". The Oregan Social Services are a benign, thoughtful and considerate outfit (WINZ could learn a thing or two), but despite their efforts, it doesn't work out and the two are soon on the move again. They run into an endless series of helpful people, which make Will's reactions increasingly difficult to sympathise with.

Apart from the strong hint that helicopter noise is a trigger to send Will to his dark place, we don't learn anything about his or their backstory. The story tends to focus more on Tom than Will, showing both her love, devotion to her father and her adaptability to both their current lifestyle and to the alternatives on offer. Tom is also growing up and becoming less dependant on Will. A cynic might say that Tom is the idealised teenage girl: beautiful, well behaved, passive most of the time, resourceful, thoughtful, caring, hardworking, eloquent when necessary, not the least bit selfish and with no sign of a cellphone.

Leave No Trace tries to take no sides between people on the edge of society and modern society itself. It also shows that those at the edge of society are there for different reasons, do it in different ways and don't always get on with each other. It is also a feel-good story, which like a fairy tale, takes us a little beyond the edge of darkness but brings us safely back. As Wikipedia is keen to point out, it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Captain Fantastic covered a similar situation in 2016, but concentrated more on the contrast between the backwoods lifestyle and modern American life and played it more for laughs.

Don't think too carefully about how Will manages to keep his crewcut looking so fresh while living outdoors.

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Ian's rating 4/5, Anne's rating 4/5

Blue My Mind

Teenage years are a time of change, perhaps more so for girls than boys. It is also a time in life where identity and fitting in are important. In Blue My Mind Mia is starting a new school at age 15. Eager to fit in she steps out of her comfort zone and tries to join the bimbo clique. The clothes maketh the bimbo. Well, actually more than the clothes there is also the smoking, drinking, an overt interest in boys etc. The more she fits in with the new crowd the more distant she becomes from her parents.

She also has her first period, something that her parents haven't prepared her for*. Things go from awkward to worse as the next day 2 of her toes are stuck together, a portent for more change. So what starts as a teen angst movie develops another angle. How Mia copes with these changes is like the stages of grief: she goes through bewilderment, challenge, denial, anger and finally acceptance.

One thing that works well in this film is that the filmmaker avoids the trap of exposition. Things are left unexplained.

For me, it is difficult not to draw comparisons between Blue My Mind and Ginger Snaps from 2000. Both are movies about teenage girls coping with unnatural changes beyond their control. Blue My Mind has a lot less gore and more teenage angst. In fact, unlike Ginger Snaps, it is not really a horror film. It is also much prettier, with better camera work. In both films, the protagonist eventually embraces the changes, but Mia resists the changes happening to her for much longer than Ginger, she also has less support from friends and family.

This is one of those films where the trailer gives too much of the plot away.

* I think the first period at age 15 and lack of parental preparation were just thrown in to make other bits of the plot work.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Birds of Passage

The Guajira Peninsula sticks out into the Caribbean Sea on the border between Colombia and Venezuela. It varies from dry desert-like conditions in the north to humid jungles in the south. It is the home of the Wayuu people. The Wayuu resisted colonization and refer to more Hispanic Colombians as Alijuna.

Birds of Passage is a story covering 20 years from the 1960s to 1980s of Raphayet who starts as a young man who with his urban Alijuna friend Moises trades coffee beans and alcohol. Raphayet falls in love with beautiful teenager Zaida at her coming out ceremony. Her mother, clan matriarch Ursula, demands an extreme dowry to dissuade the young man. But Raphayet and Moises see a couple of Peace Corps gringos who the local barman descibe as anti-communists who are really looking for cannabis. It happens that Raphayet's uncle Anibal lives in the hills and grows cannabis. A slight carreer change and soon Raphayet is ready with his dowry. Money is seductive and Raphayet and Moises continue their link in the drug trade between the Colombian jungles and America, enriching both Ursula's clan and Anibal's. But this is morality tale and there is a cost to pay. Violence, revenge and Zaida's spoilt little brother wreck havoc on both families.

There are slightly surreal elements to story. The house that Raphayet builds stands isolated in the desert and he is haunted by the ghost of his dead friend in the form of a heron.

Birds of Passage is visually beautiful and simple film. The story of how money changes relationships and can destroy subsistance cultures. While there are a few surpises, the first half is quite predictable, as is the ending.

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Ian's rating 3/5

Mandy

I'm a lumberjack and I'm Okay. Until the night some drug-crazed biker, hippy, Jesus-freaks showed up at my cabin in the woods and killed my woman.

Given how little dialogue or plot there is in this film, there are some details writer and director Panos Cosmatos thinks it is important that we know such as the character's names and that it is set in 1983. But the only name you need to know is Nicolas Cage, whose revenge rampage is what this film is all about. His transformation from a mild-mannered lumberjack living blissfully with Mandy, a new age artist/shopkeeper, to raging homicidal maniac is what we paid to see.

Mandy is a self indulgent visual orgy of 1970s and 80s imagery with an incessant soundtrack of fog horn and bass guitar. Each scene (and this film rarely moves smoothly from one scene to the next) is lit in an appropriate colour: green woods, yellows and oranges for the interior of the happy couple's cabin, blue as they sleep, red for the sky filled with oversized planets borrowed from the front cover of a science fiction novel. In addition to the occasional CGI, there are some old-fashioned animation clips to "link" things together and remind us of the dead Mandy. This film certainly qualifies for the Incredibly Strange section of the NZIFF. It seems like Panos Cosmatos was trying to create a movie for a cult following and so far he has wowed the critics.

Mandy is not without humour. The chainsaw duel with its nod to India Jones is my favourite set piece in the film.

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Ian's rating 1.5/5

A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot

"The Troubles" in Northern Ireland came to an end with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. But the conflict behind "The Troubles" didn't go away, and not all the gunmen disarmed. Not all the violence stopped. Even during "The Troubles" paramilitaries used their guns for non-political purposes and today in Derry it seems that many of the shootings by paramilitaries are non-political.

A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot is a documentary by Irish journalist Sinéad O’Shea (RNZ interview) about the "punishment" shooting of 19-year-old Philly O’Donnell by Republican gunmen in the back of the knees in 2012 (kneecapping). His mother Majella had taken him to the alley in a taxi. The gunmen had accused Philly of drug dealing and being rude about them on Facebook. Sinéad wanted to find out why Majella had cooperated with the gunmen and what happened to the family after the shooting. What was intended to be a short background piece for a news report became a documentary that covers 5 years of the O'Donnell family life.

The main character in the film is Hugh Brady, a Republican ex-paramilitary who now works at the Rosemount Resource Centre and acts as the middleman between various paramilitary groups and the local population. He claims to deal with over a hundred cases a year where gunmen want to "punish" locals, many of which he claims to defuse but in other cases such as Philly O'Donnell he passes messages and instructions from gunmen to the targets and their families. Hugh is a matter of fact storyteller with a dry sense of humour. During a phone call, he is asked if it is private and responds that it is "private to you, me, and whichever branch of the British security services is listening in". Hugh provides much of the background to the situation in his part of Derry.

Of the O'Donnell family, Kevin Barry (11 years old at the start of the filming) is the most talkative and frank. Whether he is showing off his arsenal of weapons, analysing the motives of the gunmen or mouthing off at his mother he is a documentary makers dream. He is also the member of the family who changes the most over the 5 years of filming.

One thing that struck me is the use of the word "community". Everybody in the film uses that word at least every third sentence. The story they tell is that some Republican communities have not seen any improvement since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. There are few jobs, an increase in drug use, crime and hopelessness. They refuse to cooperate with the police (despite police reforms) and dissident republican gunmen decide who gets punished and how. Given that punishments include extorting "fines" of thousands of pounds, there is strong suspicion that the gunmen fund their lifestyle by use of these "fines" backed up by the threat of shootings.

Sinéad points out that the number of suicides in Northern Ireland in the last 20 years exceeds the number of violent deaths during The Troubles and some people claim they want to go back to the past because even though it was a bad time at least was more exciting than present-day Derry!

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Jirga

I was really looking forward to Jirga but  watching it was a disappointment. It has a great trailer but you don't get anything more from the film than the trailer gives you. The basis for the story is an Australian soldier returning to Afghanistan to compensate the family of a civilian he shot in error. I thought we might get some insight into what motivated him to come ( is that the only civilian he's ever shot, is that a common problem, does the army help you deal with that?)  but we didn't. And the leading character came across as a bit of a wet blanket, and not like someone who has been in the military. I mean , how many people are on a car journey in a hot country without a bottle of water in hand?

The director did a Q and A at the showing and it seems there were various aspects of Afghanistan he wanted to showcase including the lakes of the Band-e-Amir National Parkand the supportive and communicative relationship that groups of Afghani men enjoy. It feels like the plot is an afterthought and the story doesn't live up to the scenery or the actors.

I suggest you watch the trailer and then go to a different film

Anne's rating  2/5

In the Aisles

In the Aisles is a gentle, slow-moving love story set in an East German supermarket. It's much larger and more dimly lit than we're used to in New Zealand and fork-lifts and power jacks (which feature prominently in the story) roam the aisles along with the customers.

Christian is a new recruit, and assigned to work in beverages with Bruno, who might be twice his age. Keeping the customer-level shelves stocked is a key element of the job and so is retrieving pallets of good from the stacks above the shelves (think Pak'n'Save on steroids) and attaining competence with the departmental forklift is key.

Christian falls in love with Marian, who works in sweet goods and the romance unfolds slowly along with the minutiae of Christian's days at work. Taking fifteen (which equates to taking a break) with Bruno and sometimes with Marian provides opportunity for the narrative to develop.

 In the Aisles is about the redemptive power of work, and how powerful the support of your co-workers can be. Everyone who works at the supermarket is tolerant, slow to judge, happy to help  and kind. There's really only one character who's a figure of authority, (although presumably there's a whole layer of management from "upstairs" that we never meet) and he is a guy who believes everyone is allowed to stuff up at least once.I think I'm making the film sound unfashionably Polly-anna-ish but it doesn't come across that way. It certainly emphasizes that it's "not all about you". You can provide support to a co-worker even if you're at a low point in your own life.

In the Aisles has likeable characters, excellent music and great visuals and is worthy of your viewing time, unless you're in an impatient frame of mind

Anne's rating 3.5/5

American Animals

Psychologist Nigel Latta says "teenagers are not right in the head" and this is especially true of teenage boys. American Animals gives you an idea what it would be like if, instead of driving their cars too fast, or drinking too much and doing something foolish, some teenagers you know decide to steal some very valuable books from their university library, sell them on the black market and make millions.It's a  hybrid of a morality tale, a tale of an elaborate uni student prank, and a bank-robbery film. 

A dramatic reconstruction of the events performed by actors is interspersed with the real-life perpetrators recounting what happened and the real-life parents recounting how they felt about it.They're well-presented and articulate and still relatively young (early thirties) and so the story has a kind of gruesome fascination - the archetypal American student goes bad. They did succeed in stealing the books but were later apprehended and served prison sentences as a reuslt. They are universally penitent and I guess the film is to show you that not all crime is committed by hardened criminals and people from under-privileged backgrounds - sometimes it's committed by misguided ordinary people who crave excitement, who have doubts while they're doing it and planning it and feel almost instantaneous regret.

At times American Animals has the feel of a movie that you'd be shown at high school to put you off committing crime but fortunately the entertainment value is greater than that.

Anne's rating 3/5 Victoria's rating 3/5