The largest annual celebration of international cinema in the region
MSPIFF43 Volume 1
Writing about film for more than ten years has allowed me to cover movies from blockbusters to indies. It’s also given me the privilege of attending major events like TIFF in Toronto and Sundance in Utah. While traveling around the country is nice, it’s the ultimate thrill to be on my home turf, proudly showing off my Minnesota roots and covering the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF).
In its 43rd year, MSPIFF remains a formidable presence in the international film festival circuit. Held at The Main Cinema from April 11 – 25, it has become respected for its meticulously curated selection of world cinema and its exceptional hospitality. In addition to screening 200+ films, they offer panels, talkbacks, hosted events, and opportunities to hear artists discuss their work. Each screening becomes a singular celebration of artistic innovation, all tailored to engage our discerning audiences in the Twin Cities.
Attending MSPIFF resonates with me personally, and it’s not just the comfort of returning to my bed each night and celebrating international stories. The amplification of voices in underrepresented communities and cultures makes this a vibrant two weeks every Spring.
Follow along for capsule reviews of the films I’ve seen at the festival.
Voy! Voy! Voy!
Inspired by a remarkable true story, a man in a dead-end job as a security guard pretends to be blind in an elaborate scheme to achieve his dream of emigrating from Egypt to Europe. Spotting opportunity, he becomes part of a blind football team destined for Poland. Deceiving the players, the coach, and a journalist assigned to cover the team's victory has unforseen consequences, though.
VOY! VOY! VOY!? More like No! No! No!
It’s always disappointing to start a film fest with a dud, and this black comedy from Egypt based on a true story is one of the more obnoxiously off-the-mark I’ve encountered. Taking a concept familiar to anyone who has seen The Full Monty (a group of desperate men resorts to an extreme option to better their lives) but forgetting to populate it with characters we can root for, director Omar Hilal is likely somewhere today still deciding on a tone for his film.
It is never as funny as you know it’s trying to be (our audience sat stunned as the lead pretended to be a blind man so he could join a blind football/soccer team for passage to Poland) and bizarrely injecting ultra serious scenes involving physical abuse and extortion, calling it insensitive to the blind community and offensive to others with disabilities in the way it excludes their stories is putting it mildly.
When all your leads are slimeballs with no moral compass, it probably doesn’t much matter that the script is underdeveloped and what is there is built on convenience.
I’ve also never seen an international film with so many careless errors in its subtitling.
UnBroken
The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, embarks on an international quest to uncover answers about the plight of her mother and her six siblings who, as mere children, escaped Nazi Germany relying solely on their own youthful bravado and the kindness of German strangers.
Directed by Beth Lane, UNBROKEN is a highly personal documentary that delves into an incredible true story of survival, told by those who lived it.
It reaches its most moving heights when it allows the spirited Weber siblings to recount their memories. The documentary shines brightest in these intimate moments, as several of the surviving Jewish children narrate their hard scrabble upbringing, their resilience during the Holocaust, and their eventual voyage to America. These personal testimonials infuse the film with touching authenticity and emotional depth, offering a firsthand look at the grit and unity that carried them through one of history’s gravest atrocities.
While the segments where Lane retraces the family’s journey in Europe provide necessary context, they occasionally feel somewhat routine compared to the vivid stories shared by her aunts and the writings of her uncle. It ends with a powerful visual that illustrates the ripple effect taking action has on generational lineage, but I think I could have listened to Aunt Ruth speak for a few more hours.
Daughters
Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C., jail.
(republished from my Sundance coverage of the world premiere on 1/22/24)
Shot over eight years, this powerhouse documentary from directors Natalie Rae and Angela Patton is a rollercoaster of emotions, following four young girls and their incarcerated fathers gearing up for a prison dance that’ll rip at your heartstrings so hard, they’ll need reconstructive surgery.
Patton, who kicked off this poignant program in 2008, takes these families on a healing journey with sessions from pros, unraveling the threads of consistency, parental expectations, and the Herculean effort everyone (including mothers and extended family) puts into cultivating a child’s unbreakable bond with both parents. The road isn’t smooth for families battered by broken trust, skeptically inching toward this event like the first draft of a fresh start. When the dance floor dust settles, and the film catapults through several years of updates, you realize DAUGHTERS isn’t just a movie. It’s a soul-stirring testament to Patton and her skilled team’s unwavering commitment.
In the post-premiere Q&A at Sundance, Patton called DAUGHTERS a movement with serious muscle behind its message. After witnessing the emotional powerhouse on screen, I couldn’t agree more. This isn’t just a documentary; it’s a revolution, and I’m all in. Winning both the Festival Favorite and U.S. Documentary Audience Awards at Sundance and recently bought by Netflix, expect big things for DAUGHTERS.
Tuesday
A mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her teenage daughter (Lola Petticrew) must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird. From debut filmmaker Daina O. Pusic, Tuesday is a heart-rending fairy tale about the echoes of loss and finding resilience in the unexpected.
Death is a parrot in A24’s TUESDAY, an unconventional, challenging drama with deep emotional currents approaching a topic everyone fears with bold, unflinching honesty. It’s the poignant journey of a mother, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, whose daughter Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), faces a terminal illness and how the certainty of her diagnosis has created an elephant in the room that’s only getting antsier to be noticed.
In a daring allegorical twist, Death visits the two, not as a dark shadow of despair but as a parrot (with the voice provided by Arinzé Kene) weighed down by centuries of finalities. This surreal harbinger brings unexpected humor and profound conversations that force the Louis-Dreyfus character to confront her fears concerning mortality and loss. Years of resolve and a mama bear instinct catch the parrot off guard, however, presenting a rare dilemma that has an immediate impact on the at large. Through a series of fantastical events I won’t spoil (but this IS an A24 film so remember, anything is possible), Louis-Dreyfus’s character glimpses into Death’s responsibilities, bringing her closer to understanding her daughter.
Though visually rich with beautiful imagery (the various sizes/textures of the CGI parrot are striking), the film’s dark whimsy might not resonate with everyone. At different moments, I struggled to reconcile its serious thematic subject matter with the lighter tone it employs. As a massive fan of Louis-Dreyfus, it’s no surprise her performance is undeniably powerful. Still, it runs parallel (in humor and bite) to Shirley MacLaine’s Oscar-winning turn in Terms of Endearment. Though likely unfair to compare two terrific actresses, MacLaine’s character was given function outside the realm of illness, but writer/director Daina Oniunas-Pusic doesn’t afford this mother the same, save for a few glimpses that don’t create much of a complete picture.
Property
Tereza lives in terrified seclusion. Needing a change, she retreats to her family’s rural estate, driving there in an armored car. When the exploited farm workers are pushed too far, they rise up, and she’s trapped in the vehicle.
Directed by Daniel Bandeira, PROPERTY is a film I’d been wanting to see since it premiered to acclaim at Fantastic Fest. It’s a Brazilian feature involving a reclusive woman (an extraordinarily resilient Malu Galli) shielding herself within her armored car after a gruesomely violent workers’ revolt on her isolated family farm. It begins with a tightly wound setup (even the credits create tension!), leveraging a previous traumatic experience of the woman to heighten the suspense and just builds and builds from there, showing how one act of violence can push people to limits they didn’t know they were capable of.
As she isolates herself from the laborers, two contrasting worlds — inside and outside her bulletproof glass barrier — teeter on the edge of collision. Although the film’s second act stumbles when it should maintain the initial momentum, losing some narrative tightness in the process and I wish the characters weren’t such blunt emotional cutouts resembling humans, it redeems itself with a chilling finale that brings the underlying conflicts to a dramatic, haunting crescendo.
Masterfully capturing the essence of fear, control, spiraling societal structures and individual rights, and the inevitable clash of divided worlds, PROPERTY makes for an engrossing, if often extremely cruel, watch with a powerful conclusion.
The Burdened
In war-torn Aden, Yemen, Isra’a and Ahmed struggle to provide for their family. When Isra’a becomes pregnant, their desperate attempt to secure an abortion faces bureaucratic hurdles and societal norms, pushing them to the brink
It’s a miracle that THE BURDENED was made at all, so I’ll start my review of Yemen’s submission to the 2023 Academy Awards International Feature Film category on that positive note.
Considering the resources available in the country, its risky subject matter, and a civil war that has been going on for years around them, the filmmakers are to be praised for making such a bold statement of a film. And what a multi-national team has been assembled! In this Yemeni film, there is an Indian cinematographer, an Egyptian editor, a Taiwanese composer, a Lebanese sound designer, a UK sound mixer, and a colorist from the Czech Republic. Its timely themes aside, THE BURDENED often feels flat and aloof, rarely inviting the audience to get close to the characters (the camera pans left, right, up, & down but never moves within scenes) we are supposed to feel something for.
Inspired by someone writer/director Amr Gamal knew, the rigid cinematography made sense once I found out Gamal began his career as a stage director. I’d be willing to bet most of the otherwise fine cast started in live theater, too. While this would likely play well as an onstage drama, as captured on film, it is frustratingly sluggish to begin with performances that are shaped small and then turned inward. When it does pick up near the end, the momentum is brief and can’t stay sustained.
If anything, the lesson learned here is how much active camera work and editing can instill urgency into a film.
Victoria Must Go
Privileged siblings find themselves at odds with their new stepmother, Victoria. Desperate to regain their father’s attention, they hatch an unconventional plan with the help of their supportive grandmother: hiring a hitman.
I know that Minnesota is a Nordic country, and I proudly boast Norwegian blood in my veins, but even I was a little surprised at how packed the house was for this candy-coated bauble from the Land of the Midnight Sun. I suppose any hint of black comedy amid some heavy titles seemed like a nice respite for audiences, and, in that regard, VICTORIA MUST GO absolutely serves its purpose. It’s a perfectly passable bit of fluff like that one amusement park ride that somehow every country fair has a differently painted version of. You know where its rollicking rails will take you, the screams (of laughter) you’ll emit, and when you’ve had enough and are ready to hop off. All you have to do is sit down and enjoy the ride.
As cutesy and convenient as co-writer/director Gunnbjörg Gunnarsdóttir’s film is, I wish they had gone further with the absurd style the script only briefly hints at. There is so much room on this canvas to go wild with play: a picturesque seaside cabin outside of Oslo where a man has brought his new bride, grumpy children, and a meddling mother who soon hatch a plot to off the new Mrs. by hiring an unemployed, hulking immigrant from Bosnia.
Opting to stay in PG territory keeps the movie from finding the spikiest comedic options possible, which the scenario almost desperately calls for. The result is that many laughs arrive via silly antics, benign wordplay, or fail to go the distance with a joke that’s right there in front of them instead of pursuing wild acts of devilish mischief. On the other hand, the entire film is so bright and sunny, down to the performances, that its hard to frown much when discussing it. The howling laughter throughout from our audience should tell you that they didn’t have as many nitpicks with this vanilla vacation with Victoria as I did — so I’d go with the crowd on this one 🙂
While I’m usually against it, I think VICTORIA MUST GO would be perfect for an American remake. Besides, Ine Marie Wilmann’s Victoria is such an eerily dead ringer for Kate Hudson that lazy studio execs are probably already drafting her contract.
Sugarcane
An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school sparks a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.
Winner of the Directing Award at Sundance, SUGARCANE is an appropriately harrowing documentary that uses first-person accounts from survivors as it delves into the disturbing history of St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School located near Williams Lake, B.C. Exposing the systematic abuse that scarred countless lives, the details uncovered through meticulous research and intimate testimonies are appalling and disturbing, but unfortunately not out of the blue given the number of similar atrocities reported within institutions organized by abusive Catholic-run residential schools across Canada and North America.
Revealing not just the grim reality these children faced while under the supposed care of the church but also the lasting effects of this exploitation in the years that followed, co-directors Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat let their film unfold respectfully with multiple layers being peeled back slowly so as not to expose wounds that never healed to the bitter chill of relitigation. NoiseCat goes further, providing a deeply personal and emotional tether to this past through his father, a survivor of the St. Joseph’s Mission still grappling with how to heal a hurt he doesn’t know the source of.
Urging accountability and reconciliation, the film is compelling storytelling rich in ceremony but tends to take the long way to reach its point. In many ways, that’s understandable, though. When dealing with poignant and raw pain, you don’t always meet it head-on. And when you do, as NoiseCat does quite graciously near the end, he and Kassie capture the start (or what the audience hopes is the start) of healing but brilliantly opt to let the starkness of the moment, and the metaphorical vastness of the trauma, be the visual.