TORONTO — There are hundreds of films shown at the enormous Toronto International Film Festival, coming from over 60 countries around the world. It’s only possible to see a portion of them, and the big ones with famous stars usually steal the limelight. But it’s some of the other, smaller independent films that can offer unforgettable experiences, and here are just a few.
The Zimbabwean production, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight covers the period at the end of British Rhodesia, told through the perceptive eyes of an eight-year-old girl. It’s based on a book by Alexandra Fuller, and directed by first-timer Embeth Davidtz (an actress in Schindler’s List) who here stars as the mother of a dysfunctional white family struggling to hold onto their land and way of life in a war-torn country. The remarkable young actress Lexi Venter, as Bobo, is reminiscent of the child narrator in To Kill a Mockingbird. She’s not only the center of the story but practically steals the film from everyone else with her adult-like salty language and mannerisms. This film offers a great opportunity to get an honest sense of white angst during the declining years of white rule which culminated in the 1980 election victory of socialist Robert Mugabe (whose name, by the way, is never mentioned in the film). The director grew up in apartheid South Africa and has first-hand experience. Although Bobo was raised to believe that only Blacks could be terrorists, she grew up bonded to her Black servant mother figure, who in turn was also conflicted by her boyfriend warning her to stay away from the whites. This valuable, entertaining, and gritty film shows a period of historical change when apartheid was ultimately defeated, and gives insight into how to deal with current reincarnations of the same. The film was just picked up by Sony Pictures and will premiere soon in the U.S.
On to Turkey…
The German-produced film Edge of Night takes place in Turkey during the 2016 coup attempt. An Army lieutenant is charged with taking his younger brother to a military court to be tried for fighting a soldier and attempting to flee the country. During the long and tense journey, the two brothers are forced to reconcile with their father’s suicide, who had also been charged with serious crimes. This all gets even more tense when a military coup erupts across the country which alters not only their route, but their military convictions, especially when the lieutenant discovers the superior who sent him on the mission is one of the coup plotters. It’s an emotional thriller fueled by the political intrigue in the country at the time.
…and to Colombia
From Colombia comes Pepe, an unquestioningly bizarre film about a talking hippo, whose guttural sounds are used for the concocted narration. Filmed by Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias in an experimental style, it serves as a metaphor for slavery insofar as the hippo was stolen and lifted out of the middle of Africa and dropped into Colombia, South America, where no hippos had lived before. What makes the film even more interesting is the fact that this is a true story about the billionaire drug lord Pablo Escobar, who in the 1970s captured the hippo for his private zoo. They’ve been termed “Cocaine hippos” and it’s claimed that today there are about 170 who now roam Colombia.
…and to Italy
From Italy comes Anytime Anywhere, a remake of one of the greatest films in history, the Italian classic The Bicycle Thief. This time it’s a Senegalese refugee struggling in a foreign land, who tries to buy a bicycle to get a job to survive. As in the original film, it gets stolen, he tries to get it back, gets beat up, while knowing his life depends on having transportation. It’s a moving and valuable film but not on the cinematic and emotional level as the original, which of course will always be impossible to equal.
…and the American South
The Damned is another moving film from the humanist Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini, who has the uncanny ability to capture the humanism of people on the fringes of society, many neglected and overlooked. His characters are real people in the U.S., often non-professional actors, dealing with real issues filmed with raw emotional power. Previously he captured the essence of Louisiana life in The Other Side, followed by a powerful study of people fighting racism in the American South, in What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire? In The Damned, he once again shows the humanity of young men called upon to fight in the American Civil War. The brutal conditions they confront, their reflections on war, God, good and evil, and whether what they’re doing is necessary or right, offer a profound philosophical study of the meaning of life. One young soldier questions his morals as he slowly succumbs to the harshness of winter and war. “If killing is bad, why are we killing?” Minervini has the ability to draw the viewer in and make you feel that you are in the same time and place with the real people in history moving around you. An amazing simple black-and-white cinematic wonder!
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