TORONTO — It’s impossible to see all the great films at the Toronto International Film Festival in just 12 days, so I won’t be able to report on some of those that have been winning awards and receiving accolades around the world.
But for our progressive audience, I suggest you look up these impressive feature films with a political theme, that received their debuts at TIFF. Les Indésirables by director Ladj Ly, is a sequel to his 2019 Les Misérables, a blockbuster exposé of French injustice and police brutality. His authenticity as a resident of the slums of Paris, and his awesome cinematic vision, stand out from others, as he turns his anger into powerful art that demands viewing. El Rapto (The Rescue) deals with the lingering aftermath of Argentina’s brutal dictatorship as the country attempted to recover from its political pains. Sira is a rare and valuable drama that lends clarity to the brutal happenings going on in the Sahel region of Northern Africa, an area seldom covered in Western media.
Two young boys grow up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green project in 1994 in a poignant drama from Minhal Baig entitled We Grown Now, which highlights the power of friendship, the ever-constant social change, and the struggle to remain hopeful in difficult times. Miami’s Little Haiti is the location for Monica Sorelle’s Mountains, which follows an immigrant working-class family and their struggles with class and encroaching gentrification. An American film, Pain Hustlers (Netflix), exposes the pharmaceutical industry and its role in the deadly opioid crisis, further revealing the failure of capitalism in its heartless drive for profit. Another American film, this one from the Navajo Nation, Frybread Face and Me, carries on the work of the irresistible Maorian New Zealand director, Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit), who recently offered a stunningly different reality of our Indigenous population in the highly entertaining TV series Reservation Dogs.
Of the many films I did get to see, Waititi’s latest feature, Next Goal Wins, stood out as a rousing hilarious work of art from an artist who knows how to please an audience. His Jojo Rabbit received the People’s Choice Award back in 2019 when he last appeared at TIFF. Waititi’s ability to include humor and humanism in everything he does, to embrace the oddballs and the underdogs, scores big with this true tale of a hopeless Pacific Nation soccer team trying to regain their reputation after losing 31-0 in a record-breaking match. They hire a new manager who employs a radically different approach, and the rest is history. All Waititi’s films are infused with social comment, political understanding, and respect for the oppressed of the world. Check out his filmography here.
One of the most talked about new biopics from the U.S., Rustin (Netflix), also received its debut at TIFF. A prominent and brilliant figure in the civil rights movement and close confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King, this impressive organizer was instrumental in the success of the historic 1963 March on Washington. A homosexual, Bayard Rustin gets his story told here with respect and pizzazz. His gay identity complicated his acceptance in the leadership of the civil rights movement, thus his relative obscurity in history. A 2002 California Newsreel doc entitled Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (streaming free on Kanopy) presents his story in a more realistic manner, covering a lot of his life not mentioned in this Hollywood version, but probably not as entertaining to most. Colman Domingo plays Rustin convincingly with flair and confidence, capturing the persona of this unique activist. Domingo also appeared at TIFF in the world premiere of Sing Sing, a doc about inmates creating theater at the Sing Sing prison in Ossining, N.Y. As a side note, an interesting line in Rustin makes light of the fact that Rustin once was in the YCL, followed quickly by, as any good enterprise of the empire would do, “but he left them.”
Another film quickly gaining attention is the thought-provoking drama, American Fiction, based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, a satire about the book industry. Actor Jeffrey Wright stars in Emmy Award-winning writer Cord Jefferson’s adaptation about the perils of succumbing to profit over principle. Monk, a Black male author and college professor, hasn’t published a book in years. He’s irritated how other successful writers lower their writing style for the god of profit, while his more serious and truthful books are being ignored. He takes it out on his students, friends, and family.
American Fiction is also about family—his aging mother (played by the venerable Leslie Uggams) complains that he never calls or visits, his sister dies, his brother is habitually confrontational, and his love life has gone to nil. His life and income are falling apart as he desperately succumbs to writing a mediocre, condescending hack job of a novel using a pseudonym while hoping to cash in on public tastes. Surprisingly, the book becomes a hit, and his life changes drastically, adding new levels to his family relationships as he acquires a loving partner and juggles his new public persona. He gets a film deal and the film offers a subtle stab at Hollywood as a commodifier of Black culture driven by the profit motive. But even in the book and film industry, isn’t that the bottom line of capitalism? At the sacrifice of honest representation? Is this film that preaches against commodification also a victim of this process? Writer Cord Jefferson’s interview at TIFF takes a poke at Black America’s PC woke culture that tends to compartmentalize and profit from Black stereotyping.
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