NYFF '24: Mati Diop tells a ghost story in “Dahomey”

by Cláudio Alves

In a territory located within present-day Benin, there once was the Kingdom of Dahomey, which prospered from the early 17th to near the dawn of the 20th century. Around the mid-1800s, the kingdom became the focus of European imperial forces after a couple centuries as a supplier of enslaved people to the Atlantic slave trade. First came the British and then the French. The Franco-Dahomean wars led to its fracturing, a colonial schism that resulted in the kingdom's annexation into French West Africa. In 1892, when European forces invaded, thousands of treasures and historical artifacts were taken from the royal palace. For decades, they have resided in French museums despite many Beninese calls for their return. By 2021, the two nations reached an agreement.

Out of the estimated 7,000 objects, 26 pieces were shipped from the Musée du quai Branly to Cotonou, in Benin. Mati Diop's Dahomey details this journey, its cultural significance and context within the decolonization process. This year's Gold Berlin Bear winner considers all of it in a swift 68 minutes, embracing documentary techniques while combining them with a touch of poetry, perchance a phantasm…

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TIFF '24: Oscar submissions from Denmark & Bulgaria

by Cláudio Alves

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE may have benefited from a different title, different expectations.
Like last year, my 2024 TIFF journey was marked by many a Best International Film Oscar submission. I've already written about some of them, including contenders from Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Palestine, and Portugal. Now, as this protracted post-festival coverage reaches its end – got to move on to NYFF at some point – let's consider the official submissions from Denmark and Bulgaria. The Cannes-competing The Girl with the Needle from Magnus von Horn, and the TIFF-premiering Triumph by Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva dramatize shocking true stories that prove Lord Byron was right. Truth really is stranger than fiction…

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TIFF '24: From the River to the Sea

by Cláudio Alves

At the Berlinale, NO OTHER LAND won the Best Documentary and Panorama Audience awards.

The 2024 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival was marked by multiple instances of political protest. PETA came for Pharrell Williams, and the documentary Russians at War had its screenings delayed until after the official festival in response to the public outcry against it. While some organizers, guests, and audience members may have grumbled about it, one should expect such demonstrations at an event that purports "to transform the way people see the world" and lead in the "creative and cultural discovery through the moving image." Like every art form, cinema is political – everything is political – and a festival's program can delineate allegiances and avenues of dialogue. In its search for plurality, it can also illuminate contradictions of its own. 

In the realm of political cinema, No Other Land and From Ground Zero, two of the year's most essential films, were screened at TIFF. Both works deal with the plight of the Palestinian people…

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Interview: Director Maura Delpero on Italy's new Oscar Submission "Vermiglio"

by Elisa Giudici

Photo Credit: Biennale di Venezia

Today, the Italian selection committee announced that Vermiglio by Maura Delpero would represent Italy at the 97th Oscars, competing in the Best International Feature category "for its ability to portray rural Italy of the past, with sentiments and themes that are universal and current."

The film, presented at the Venice Film Festival, won the Grand Jury Prize and received enthusiastic praise from critics. Just minutes after the announcement, Maura Delpero participated in a press conference to share her reaction to the news, discuss the first audience screenings in Italy just days before the national release, her upcoming festival commitments, and her long journey to this achievement...

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TIFF '24: A Mohammad Rasoulof Double Feature

by Cláudio Alves

THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

Much of the period leading up to this year's Cannes Film Festival was consumed with news of Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. Always outspoken against an oppressive regime, his career has been dedicated to political art commenting on present injustices through the prism of fiction. For this, he has been arrested multiple times, and his latest feature, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, proved too much for the Iranian authorities. Police hounded many people involved with the production, Cannes organizers were pressured to drop the official competition title, and Rasoulof himself was put behind bars, convicted to eight years in prison and an additional filmmaking ban. Thankfully, before celebrations started at the Croisette, the cineaste managed an escape to a safe house in Germany, the same country that now takes Sacred Fig to the Oscars as its official submission.

At TIFF, two works with screenplays signed by the Iranian political dissident were screened. There was the eponymous Cannes prize-winner and Seven Days, directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi…

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