TIFF 2019: The Round-Up

Best-of-Fest:

Collective (Alexander Nanau, Romania)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, France)
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk (Zacharias Kunuk, Canada)
The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (Karim Aïnouz, Brazil)

Small, Lovely, Bittersweet Works:

Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
Three Summers (Sandra Kogut, Brazil)
The Perfect Candidate (Haifaa al-Mansoor, Saudi Arabia)

I’m Here for All This Health-Care Crisis Cinema:

Collective (Alexander Nanau, Romania)
Jordan River Anderson (Alanis Obomsawin, Canada)
The Cave (Feras Fayyad, Syria)

Cinema=Bodily Presence:

Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa, Portugal)
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk (Zacharias Kunuk, Canada)
The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (Karim Aïnouz, Brazil)
Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodovar, Spain)
Atlantics (Mati Diop, Senegal)

Men Ruin Everything:

The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (Karim Aïnouz, Brazil)
The Perfect Candidate (Haifaa al-Mansoor, Saudi Arabia)
Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa, Portugal)
The Cave (Feras Fayyad, Syria)
Three Summers (Sandra Kogut, Brazil)
Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello, Italy)

Cannot Deal with Hermetic, Formalist Works At This Moment:

I Was Home, But … (Angela Schanelec, Germany)
The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania)

Others Liked These Films A Little Bit More than I Did:

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea)
Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello, Italy)

Favorite Q&As:

The cast and crew of Zacharias Kunuk’s One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk
Alanis Obomsawin
Pedro Costa

Favorite TIFF Coverage on Twitter:

This thread of short takes by the critic Alex Heeney in which she is attentive to both the aesthetics and the politics of the films she saw at the festival. A model that is rarer than it should be…

Movies I Most Regret Missing:

Heimat is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise, Germany)
Anne at 13,000 Feet (Kazik Radwanski, Canada)
Saint Maud (Rose Glass, UK)

pic: Collective (Alexander Nanau, Romania)