The largest annual celebration of international cinema in the region
MSPIFF43 Volume 3
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.
The Queen of My Dreams
Against the backdrop of a shared obsession with Bollywood fantasy, Mariam, a Pakistani Muslim woman, and her Canadian-born daughter Azra come of age in two different eras.
Fraught mother-daughter relationships have been fueling scripts since the dawn of cinema, coming in just ahead of men with Peter Pan Syndrome who are really just missing their dads. The female family drama framework is given a multi-generational twist in THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS a Canadian production by writer/director Fawzia Mirza, inspired by her short film.
While Azra, the leading character played by Amrit Kaur, may resemble Mirza, a queer Muslim Pakistani, the film is only semi-autobiographical and routinely takes off in flights of inspired fancy. It resembles Mirza’s life in depicting lesbian Azra discovering there’s more to her brittle mother, Mariam (a fantastic Nimra Bucha, terrific last year in Polite Society), than the strong-willed matriarch devoted to tradition. Both adults now, a family tragedy will bring the estranged women together, re-opening a wound of rejection Azra thought she had moved on from. Mirza packs the film with a visual punch and rich (if at times ear-worm-y and overly repetitive ) recreations of a popular Bollywood film Mariam and Azra would bond over.
With Bucha and Kaur turning in superbly lived-in performances in their present-day roles, they also have alternative iterations to play whenever we travel back in time (or into a movie) to see how Mariam came to be married and start a new life in Nova Scotia. For me, there’s a disjointed energy whenever we switch periods, a tonal inconsistency that weakens the stronger sequences (and performances) the movie works so hard to show off. It works more often than not, though, even if the central section is middling.
Flipside
When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. Flipside documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years.
Like many members of Generation X, Chris Wilcha didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do with his life, but he knew he didn’t want it to be the same one his parents lived. This wasn’t the result of negative feelings toward them, just the desire to break out of the norm. For a while, it looked like his career as a mold-shattering filmmaker with something to say would come true, but the universe had a different plan for how Wilcha could share his gift for capturing real-life stories…and it was a long game.
Wilcha’s documentary FLIPSIDE is more than a coming-home look at the New Jersey record store he worked at as a teen and his efforts to revive its rapidly waning popularity. It’s a jumping-off point for Wilcha to look back at numerous projects he started but never finished and examine why the memories we have freeze-dried in our brains can, once thawed, take on a poignant potency. Wilcha’s talent for catching life quirks is a boon to this endlessly entertaining, frequently laugh-out-loud funny film packed with characters that are real, well, characters.
In the hands of another filmmaker, swapping between clips of an unfinished documentary of the late jazz photographer Herman Leonard and Wilcha’s father raiding a hotel maid’s cart for toiletries to feed his hoarding habit would seem incongruous. Still, his work with This American Life/Ira Glass and Judd Apatow has fine-tuned his frequency for showing humanity in all walks of life. When you think Wilcha has dangled too many of his historically loose threads in front of us, he performs a bit of magic (the kind found in the best documentaries, of which this undoubtedly is) and turns the tables on audiences.
Holly
Holly fatefully skips school on the day of a deadly fire that ends up killing some of her classmates. Her intuition, which likely saved her life, seems to also carry a power to magically aid the grieving–this discovery gives Holly, a high school misfit, a sense of belonging as well as a newfound sense of power.
A moody refraction of supernatural classics like Carrie and The Sixth Sense, Belgian director Fien Troch’s newest film draws from the high school torment of the Stephen King novel while simultaneously hinting at powers that extend beyond the natural realm of the 1999 scare fest. Troch isn’t interested in repeating what’s been done (quite superbly) already, opting instead for a subdued tale of a lonely girl ostracized from most of her peers who wakes up one morning with a feeling like something terrible will happen if she goes to school.
Something bad does happen, and when others find out that Holly (already bullied at school with the moniker “The Witch”) had this premonition, the reactions from students, staff, and adults in the community are troubling. Hurt people attempting to heal either see Holly’s absence from school that day as confirmation of the dark power hiding within or believe she possesses a greater purpose to help, not harm, them all. Greet Verstraete plays a teacher who sees this divide and, thinking she is bridging a gap, reaches out to Holly, realizing too late she’s exacerbated a problem and dangled a carrot in front of her student who doesn’t understand what she’s truly capable of.
Arguably slow-moving but led by an intuitive, commanding performance from newcomer Cathalina Geeraerts, HOLLY won’t work for everyone, including its potential puzzler of an ending. Flashy studio releases have conditioned me to expect more from thorny movies like this as a complete package. However, the reality is that HOLLY represents a realistic depiction of life disrupted by tragedy and fate.
No One Asked You
Comedian, disrupter extraordinaire Lizz Winstead (co-creator of The Daily Show) and her team of activists crisscross the U.S. to support abortion clinic staff and bust stigma. Pop culture icons and next-gen comics fuel this six-year road film activating small-town folks to rebuild vandalized clinics, exposing wrongdoer politicians, domestic terrorists, and media neglect as the race to the bottom ensues.
Right off the bat, I have to say, this feels strange. Watching a 100-minute documentary called NO ONE ASKED YOU, predominately made by women/female-identifying filmmakers on the topic of abortion rights and how multiple levels of governments have systematically stripped them away, presided over primarily by men, who the hell am I (a cis male) to add anything to the conversation? Sure, that’s the gig I signed up for reviewing the film.
Still, in most of these instances shown in director Ruth Leitman’s doc, we guys are proving to be impediments in the more significant work being done to not just restore Roe v. Wade, as the subject/star of the doc Lizz Winstead said in the Q & A after, but expand on it to fix how broken it was in the first place. To move out of the way while pushing the importance of the film’s message forward, I’ll say that while the filmmaking here can at times feel frenetic and struggles to stay in one place for too long, it mirrors the urgency Winstead and her team at Abortion Access Front are attempting to convey to a general public remaining frustratingly dormant and elected officials abusing their political power as representatives of the people to push their personal beliefs/agendas which have no place in government.
When Leitman lets the film settle, and we get quality time with the front-line workers who contend with hate groups regularly, the real power of the piece emerges, and that’s when you can feel the groundswell of strength in numbers bloom. Winstead is a dynamite force, yes, but several other members of her team featured in the doc move the dial to new levels. I wish they had presented all the lightning rod facts more visually because a good graphic can convey so much more than words alone. Still, watching the film leaves you empowered to ask more questions of those who refuse to give a voice to the very people who will be impacted by the laws they create.
Art for Everybody
Thomas Kinkade's landscapes made him the most collected and despised painter ever. After his shocking death, his family discovers a vault of unseen paintings that reveal a complex artist whose life and work embody our divided America.
Who has the right to say what makes good art? I understand the irony of a movie critic asking that question in a review, but it’s valid depending on how seriously both sides take the opinion. I want my take on a film to inform and entertain more than anything, and I wouldn’t want it to discourage you from your own examination. Being on the other side of a critical reception when I was an actor, I know how much weight you put on a critic’s write-up shouldn’t correspond to how you value your talent.
That objectivity on the subjectivity of art is a running theme of ART FOR EVERYBODY, director Miranda Yousef’s documentary on the life and career of Thomas Kinkade. Ten years after his death, the family, colleagues, collectors, and critics of the self-proclaimed Painter of Light have gathered to discuss Kinkade’s meteoric rise in the ‘90s to become one of the most successful painters of all time (at least from a business perspective), his eventual downfall, and tragic death at 54. Though Kinkade’s unmistakable work of gauzy cottages and colorful gardens infiltrated our cultural landscape by way of paintings, plates, ornaments, and even housing developments designed in his style, the film reveals he had thousands of other prints showing a different side to his artistry the world (and his staunchest critics) never got to know.
These paintings reveal not just a fuller picture of his unheralded talent but the depths of the struggle he faced, wearing a mask of piety to cover a dark pain within. Interviews with his family are revealing, but only to a point, and you get the feeling the filmmakers decided to tread carefully on pushing further to protect the project from crumbling. In that way, and in the absence of a longtime business partner who didn’t participate, the exploration of Kinkade’s life doesn’t feel entirely told yet. What’s been made available to us is like a Kinkade print we may have bought at one of his mall stores, not quite the real thing but a close replica minus a few details.
Cold
As Ódinn investigates decades-old deaths at a juvenile treatment centre, he begins to suspect that the sinister secrets he uncovers are connected to his ex-wife's mysterious suicide.
If you’ve subscribed to streaming services BritBox or AcornTV, you already know that Nordic crime dramas have made major inroads into the mystery market. While there aren’t enough hours in the day to get lost in those chilly fjords of ongoing series, I appreciate being allowed to catch a solid thriller imported from these Mid-Atlantic Ridge areas.
Based on Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s 2015 novel The Undesired, COLD teeters on the ultra-commercial side of things for #MSPIFF, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Its slick suspense and high production values act almost like a palate cleanser with the snap of wintergreen if your schedule has been packed up until this point with morose documentaries or absurdist comedies. Jumping between two time periods to track a crime in the past that has a ripple effect on a present-day suicide, director Erlingur Thoroddsen keeps the viewer on an express train ride, complete with hairpin turns and electric jolts on the journey.
Its speed glosses over plot holes, lapses in logic, and masks some unremarkable performances, but the atmosphere is frequently impressive and is played out in a production of sleek lines and ice-cold hues. You could watch it in 100-degree heat and still feel the need to bundle up. A pair of performances, Elín Hall and Ólöf Halla Jóhannesdóttir, one in each time period, are standouts for the way they keep their cards close to the vest, making the final twists in the waning minutes that much more successful. As a late-night watch (and programmed as such at the festival), it’s effective and more than gets the job done.
The Nature of Love
Sophia and Xavier have been together for over a decade, but they seem like an old couple, comfortable more than passionate. When Xavier hires Sylvain, a charismatic and handsome contractor, the door to passion is opened to Sophia.
While evidence points to the blockbuster rom-com making a comeback in the next few years, I have serious doubts we’ll ever get back into a groove of finding new rapturous dramas about love to tuck away for a Saturday date night or cozy Sunday afternoon.
It’s a good thing we’ll be able to feast on emotionally intelligent experiences like THE NATURE OF LOVE, Monia Chokri’s exquisite look at a woman who ends one relationship to begin another without taking stock of the person she’s grown into during the ten years she was with her former partner. As soon as she realizes that she wants more than just a temporary fling with the handyman hired to renovate her chalet, she finds that certain complications, such as feelings, family, and friends, have begun to interfere. These complications threaten to force her into another set of compromises she thought she had already left behind. Part of why the film works is that it embraces the mistakes made by the couple without judging them for the connection they found.
Through remarkable camerawork that makes us feel like flies on the wall watching intimate moments unfold and rapid-fire realistically raw dialogue that never comes off as overwritten to prove its point, Chokri gives her terrific (and terrifically sexy) leads Magalie Lépine Blondeau as Sophia and Pierre-Yves Cardinal as Sylvain room to create red hot sparks and wow, do those sparks create some fire. Chokri herself joins a large cast dealing with relationship issues involving fidelity and respect. It’s not to be missed, except maybe for couples on the precipice of going their separate ways because the realism in Chokri’s screenplay hits and hits hard.
Also, the original French title is Simple comme Sylvain (Simple as Sylvain), which I almost like better.
Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story
Noël Coward–songwriter, playwright, singer, actor, spy–possessing tremendous talent… and contradictions. A gay icon terrified of being outed, who knew he wanted to be a star at age two, he charmed the world and hid his secrets well.
As someone with a particular affinity for documentaries, my go-to niche will always be those that delve into the lives of celebrities. There’s something in learning about those who have left a mark on the world that has me constantly on the hunt for more. Even if the overall quality of the doc isn’t top-notch, preserving a legacy for future generations is a good enough reason to give it a watch. Even the thinnest of these types of biopics can inspire me to dig deeper and learn more about the subject(s), which is always a welcome outcome.
I suppose Barnaby Thompson’s doc on the witty multi-hyphenate artist Noël Coward is a good enough introduction to his laundry list of achievements, even if it’s basically a Wikipedia page adapted for the screen. It works best when it focuses on Coward’s success in material that’s not immediately associated with him, namely his dramatic roles and writing that indicated the wide range of his talent. At one time, he was so sought after for his connections and influence that he even became a spy in WWII. Coward’s sexuality was well-known but a topic he never confirmed publicly. In today’s world, that would cause some in the community to bristle, one of numerous nooks and crannies Thompson doesn’t explore, but it hasn’t stopped him from becoming a gay icon based on his body of work.
The film’s main drawback is the feeling that it is no more significant than one of those audio/visual supplements you’d see at an artist retrospective in a museum. Along with overusing Adam Lambert’s Bond-like cover of a Coward song (three times!), Alan Cumming’s intensely bright narration and chintzy font/graphics that give it a cheap feel, MAD ABOUT THE BOY: THE NOËL COWARD STORY should be more of a moment for a master but instead is a rote 90-minute footnote with no actual angle into anything more profound than what we already know.