Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Nuri Ceylan Bilge | Turkey | 2011
157 min
You will have to wait very long and follow very intently the plot and dialogues of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia to catch onto what the film is really about. On the surface it presents itself as a simple police procedural, but the film has bigger ambitions, a darker undertone and more layered subtext that reveals itself using a slow boil approach. Continue reading
Shariq Madani at DIFF 2011
Daily Festival Report: 13th December 2011 (Day #6)
The stats in favor of good movies over not-so-good ones was not looking too good after the first four days of DIFF. But two days have changed that. Including the last two movies I watched on Day#5, I have now seen five movies consecutively that have won me over. Read on for my report on the three I watched today.
Las Acacias
Pablo Giorgelli | Argentina | 2011
84 min
The debut feature of Argentine director Pablo Giorgelli, Las Acacias is a road movie that observes the seeds of a new relationship between a truck driver and his erstwhile passengers, a mother & her infant daughter. Given the charge by his boss to bring a woman from Paraguay to Argentina on his trip, the lumber-truck driver initially sees this as a tepid inconvenience, eventually warming up to them. Directed with the patience and aesthetics of a mood-piece, the film does well to capture the journey the two adults make, on the road as well as towards each other. An observant start bereft of dialog sets the movie up nicely for a snug 84-minute experience of eloquent cinema, an experience easy to relish in. Continue reading
Las Acacias
Pablo Giorgelli | Argentina | 2011
84 min
Las Acacias is a film you can’t fault for its simplicity. A road trip movie about a trucker who helps transport a woman and her baby daughter from Paraguay to Argentina, it is rhythmic in its pacing even when not a lot happens in the film itself. Continue reading
Shariq Madani at DIFF 2011
Daily Festival Report: 12th December 2011 (Day #5)
Day 5 peaked in a way I could not have expected. It featured not one, but two stellar movies, one of which is easily the best movie I have seen all year as well as one of the most profound I have ever seen.
Tatsumi
Eric Khoo | Singapore | 2011
97 min
Billed as the biography of famed Japanese manga artist Yohihiro Tatsumi, the movie instead is an animated retelling of his works, book-ended with parts of the artist’s life. While this may seem an interesting enough concept, all it does is reproduce the books as they are on-screen (with voice-overs). While there may be a small segment of the audience that does not prefer reading the books instead of watching them on-screen, the movie is a gross injustice to the artist’s works. The stories are interesting enough, but do little to explain why Tatsumi is a celebrated artist. Therefore, on a fundamental level, the movie fails. Continue reading