Forastera (2025) Toronto 2025

Cata and her sister Eva are spending the summer with their grandparents. When the grandmother dies after a fall the family is shaken. One day Cata tries on her grandmothers clothes. She begins to feel closer to her. She also begins to take on the place of her grandmother 

This is a beautiful and beautifully acted look at the loss of a loved one and how that alters ourselves and the people around us. It is a film that takes us on a journey into grief that we don't usually see.

Told in a mannered style, it's clear that this film is about something. shot so that every image is erfectly composed to look like something you'd hang on a wall or see in a magazine this is film with a kind of hyper reality. For me this resulted in a film that I like agreat deal but which I didn't love. Director Lucia Alenar Inglesias is very much trying to make a point and while it doesn't kill the film it does keep us at arms length from the story.

Reservations aside, it is worth a look.

Under The Same Sun (2025) Toronto 2025

In Hispanola in 1819, the son of a Spanish merchant, his companion, a master silk maker, connect with a Haitian deserter. to set up a silk factory. As the trio deal with the troubles of setting up their business, they have to also deal with the complications with each other and the people around them.

If you are like me, you will be hooked from the opening moments. The image of a broken man at the bottom of a cliff had me wondering where this was going to go.  This was one of the very few films this year where there was no question I was hooked from the start. More importantly this was one of the fewer films where I simply sat staring at the screen the not moving. 

I loved this movie so much that I don't want to say too much. I want you to see this blind. I want you to know as little as possible and then let you go see this film and it's wonders. It's beautifully acted to the point the actors disappear into their roles. The images  will transport you to another time and place.

I know the people promoting this would love pull quotes and gushy discussions, but honestly the less said the better. This film doesn't need hyperbole, this just needs to be seen.  If you want to know how good this is know it's one of my favorite films of the year, and one of the few ones where I am hoping to see it a few more times on the big screen so I can get lost in it for a few hours.

Recommended.

OCA (2025) Toronto 2025

I have been wrestling with OCA since I first saw it.  I’ve watched it three times now and I’m still not certain what I think of it.  Normally I would say that it is a good thing because it means I’ve remained connected to the film but with OCA I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, largely because I’m not sure I know what the film is trying to say.

The film is the story of a nun named Oca. She is in a dying convent in the country. It is only herself and two other nuns. Oca is prone to having mystical visions. She is sent by her superior to speak to the archbishop about saving the convent. She is told if she is not successful, not to come back. Along the way she meets some pilgrims carrying a saint, a rich woman with an important husband and a pilot who wants to go on leave but can’t because of the arrival of the archbishop.

Set up as journey of faith, OCA is a film that is always reaching to say something more than the surface. The people Oca meet are not just people but representation of some spiritual aspect. This is fine for the deeper meaning but for the human narrative the film feels artificial. Since everyone isn’t just a person, they never are human, and we never connect. My repeated watching of the film was a search for a human being on the screen and not a cinematic treatise.

Intellectually I like the film, but emotionally I don’t need to see it again.

Amoeba (2025) Toronto 2025

Choo, a rebellious 16 year old attending a Chinese school in Singapore, befriends three other students and they are inspired by the stories of the gangster fueled past to form a gang. While the girls embrace the ghosts of the past in the stories they also attempt to try and contact the ghost that Choo insists wanders around her bedroom.

Full disclosure, as much as I liked AMEOBA, I think I was the wrong audience for the film. While I could enjoy the film and it's coming of age tale, I think I would have loved this even more if I was a young lady just out of my teens. This is very much film connected to being a young woman who doesn't feel she fits in.

That said, I liked AMEOBA a great deal. It's a well acted film that nicely examines what it means to be in a world where one is not supposed to stand out.  I  like enough that I wish I could have connected to it more,

Recommended.

Flana (2025) Toronto 2025

Flana, the term, refers to the thousands of young girls who have disappeared in Iraq. They have either been disappeared by various forces, killed or run off. Where the girls go is not always known. Not everyone cares because in Iraqi society women are not important. How unimportant? Young woman can be killed by a family member, and it will barely be a blip.

FLANA, the film is the story of the director trying to come to terms with the disappearance of a childhood friend.  She is not sure what happened or why. Being a young girl who was raised by an aunt, who was a midwife, made her subject to some of misogynistic attitudes. It is also a film that is going to kick your ass.

This is a film that messes with your head. The film opens with someone speaking some words that sound incredibly creepy, as if they are directed at a young girl in a sexual way. They are then flipped, and we realize the words refer to the birth of baby. It's kind of funny, but at the same time it's not since it places us into a very different place than we are used to. That uneasy feeling is further compounded by how the story is told. There are moments that seem to be meditative or belong in an essay film, and others that are long single take interviews that won't let us look away.

I was rocked. I was uncomfortable. I didn't know what to think. When the film ended, I just stared at the screen trying to figure out what I thought. The world that presents is not quite what I expected. Its a form of Misogyny that seems to be more insidious and eviler because it isn't as cut and dry as other forms. This is somehow different...and worse, it is directed at children.

Almost three weeks on I find I am haunted by this film.

This is a must-see film. Yes, it is going to punch you in the gut, but you need to see this.

Brief thoughts on Nomad Shadow (2025) Toronto 2025

A young woman who is an illegal migrant in Spain is arrested and sent back home to Western Sahara. There she tries to find a way to get enough money to go back to Spain, while also trying to find a place in the world.

This is a small gem of a film. It's a film that shows us a life that we don't really consider. It's not just the setting of Western Sahara, but the fact that the film deals with what happens when someone who illegally migrates is forced to go home. How does the returnee is deal with the change. More to to the point what happens when the return home is going to make your life complicated. Coming from, a nominally traditional family, our heroine has to deal with how her more European attitude and her tattoos are viewed by her parents.

I really liked this film a great deal. A couple of weeks on I am still pondering it. Because the film is still haunting me, I'm going to keep this piece short. The reason I'm saying this I'm not quite sure about what I feel about the ending.  The ending is fine, but at the same time I have been torn about if thats the perfect ending or if it should have kept going.  Do we have enough? It's a weird thing to get hung up on, and some people may say I should let it go, but I don't want to do that. I want to ponder the film and pondering the final beautiful image keeps me connected.

Recommended.

Ripe (2025) Toronto 2025

 

A young woman must decide if she is going to agree to an arranged marriage.

Mystical drama is kind of hard to write up. The story itself isn't anything special, but it has one or two turns I don't want to spoil. The films strength is more in how it is told. There is a sense of mysticism the pervades much of this that lifts it up from a run of the mill tale. This is a film that survives on the details and a film where the details make this worth see.

Search this out.

To The Victory (2025) Toronto 2025

After the war in Ukraine a filmmaker tries to figure out what to do stay, or join his family elsewhere in Europe. His wife and daughter like it better in Vienna and don't want to come home. The promised it will all be better after the war doesn't seem to be happening.

A low key, comedic look at life after the big thing is a goodlook at making do with our expectations for the future. What are we supposed to do when what we thought would happen, doesn't?  

The film plays out in long  sequences with the camera just observes. We are in the room with the characters as things play out. This makes for some interesting moments (the opening sequences for example) where things are given a different bend then they might have had there been cuts.

I liked the film.

A pointer toward A SAMI WEDDING - episode 1, 2 and 5 - Toronto 2025

In a small Norwegian village two families, one rich and one poor, whose matriarchs don't get along, prepare for a wedding of two of the kids a short month away.

The Toronto film festival is only running three episodes of the series (1,2 and 5) and while I liked what I saw in the episodes I'm not going to do a real review. As a rule, I don't like to review series unless I can see the whole series or a whole season. I probably would have done a review, but the fact I was missing part of the story makes me uncomfortable reviewing what's here beyond saying it's good see it.

Recommended.

Brief thoughts on Meadowlarks (2025) Toronto 2025

Director Tasha Hubbard tells the true story of four of five Cree siblings who were separated in the 1960's by the Canadian government who took them away from their single mother and gave them to white families (it was a program called Scoop). Fifty years on the track each other down and come together to try and reconnect over the course of a week.

This narrative version of the director's 2017 documentary BIRTH OF A FAMILY. It is a story that is close to the heart of Hubbard who was herself relocated by the Scoop program. It is a very good film which reveals what the forced removal of the children in the name of giving them a better life, actually did to them.

And at this point I have to take a step back and say that I can't say much more than that. The issue at hand is that in the wake of seeing Hubbard's SINGING BACK THE BUFFALO last year because it blew me away, I made an effort to try and track down her other films. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, except that a short time before I was given MEADOWLARKS to review, I saw BIRTH OF A FAMILY, which is excellent, and I did not have enough distance to fully take this narrative on its own terms. Watching MEADOWLARKS I was thinking of the earlier film. Therefore, I cannot in good conscious do a deep dive review because it will result in an unfair compare and contrast.

However, what I can say is that MEADOWLARKS is a solid film and on its own terms is worth your time.

Nuns Vs The Vatican (2025) Toronto 2025

This is the story of what happened in the wake of a nun named Gloria who wrote an open letter to the Vatican and the world saying that Marko Rupnik, a world renowned artist and priest, had been abusing and blackmailing her for 28 years. With the floodgates open many other sisters came forward and began to tell their stories. 

This is a very deliberate and slowly building tale with a hidden punch. The film begins in a manner that seems almost matter of fact, until it begins to add in details and your blood begins to boil. 

As someone mentions in the film this is the story about the other 50% of people being abused by priests. While everyone was focusing on the altar boys most people were ignoring the nuns. People kind of forget there are more nuns than altar boys. Things were happening even if no one wanted to say anything.

I really liked this film a great deal. I was especially surprised about how this story goes. If you don't know the story, which I didn't, this isn't a typical tale with a typical ending. 

I fully expect this film to get a lot of attention and end up at a theater near you. When it does, make an effort and go.

In Search Of The Sky (2025) Toronto

In India couple take their mentally challenged adult son on a pilgrimage to a religious festival.

This is a trip you need to take. What begins as a slice of life about how someone with mental issues is treated in rural India, becomes something of a gut punch. This is a film that changes as it goes and becomes wonderful as it does so. I was moved.

While I don't know anything of the specifics of the story, I do know how people with mental issues are treated. Because I have had friends with issues, and I saw the cruelty and the complications that parents have to deal with.

I don't want to say to much. The power of the film is not knowing where it is going. I will say that this is a gem you will want to track down. This will take you somewhere you've never been before, have you see the world in a new way and make you confront things you never thought of.

One of the great finds of Toronto

DANDELION'S ODYSSEY (2025) Toronto 2025

This is a repost of my review from when the film world premiered at Cannes

When the world is destroyed in an atomic war some of the fuzzy danelion seeds are blown into space, through a black hole and to a new planet where the fuzzies try to find a place to grow.

Wordless animated science fiction tale looks spectacular. There are some really wonderful images in this film. Its a film I would love to see on a truly huge screen so I can really look at the things hidden in the images.

As great as the film looks, and as good as the animators are at giving the fuzzies life, this film kind of runs out of steam  about 20 minutes in. Yes, we are curious about where this is going, and yes the images impress, but at a certain point there isn't enough going on to keep us fully engaged. Yes I stayed to the end, but at the same time some of it seemed like some of the sequences were there to just show off what the animators can do.

And I know that makes it sound like I don't like the film, but I do. I like so much of the film that I wish it was a little tighter so that we had a perfect viewing experience.

Worth a look for the curious- especially on the big screen.

Marriaginalia (2025) Toronto 2025

 

The shortest film at the 2025 Toronto FIlm Fest is a three and a half minute look at three moments in a married life. 

While I like the film and think it's funny, I am bewildered how and why something so light and fluffy ended up at TIFF. It's not that it isn't funny but its out of place is such a fancy fest.

Lovely Day (2025) Toronto 2025

I’m going to keep my thoughts about LOVELY DAY brief because I honestly don’t have much to say. When the film was done and I had traveled the course to the alter and beyond with the various characters my reaction was “that was perfectly fine.” I then sat for a few minutes and tried to figure out what to say.  Nothing beyond the “that was perfectly fine” came to mind. Even having dinner after watching the film resulted in no thoughts, nor did the passing of several days. Ultimately that’s where my feelings start and end.

The film is the story of a wedding. Primarily focusing on the groom and his cousin the film jumps backwards and forward through time to show the craziness of the wedding and the stress it produces when the various people the groom has worked to keep away from each other are put together for the happy occasion. It’s a funny film that made me smile and wince with recognition.

It’s definitely worth a look.

Brief thoughts on Laundry (2025) Toronto 2025

In 1968, a young man whose family is allowed to run a laundry in a white part of South Africa is torn between going into the family business and becoming a musician. 

This is a good domestic drama with heavy social issue over tones. It's a film that shows us what it was like under apartheid just as the world was really beginning to notice the injustice taking place.

The trouble with the film is that outside of being set in South Africa, this is a story we've seen any number of times before. All of the threads from the coming-of-age tale, fighting with the parents over direction and the social justice angle have all been done before in some form or combination. Once all the pieces are set up in the first few minutes, we can largely tell how this is going to play out. I was never fully engaged because I knew how this would play out.

While the film is very good on it's own terms, the fact that it hits too many of the expected points make this seem less than it really is.

Worth a look.

DISC (2025) Toronto 2025

 The film is about two people at a sales meeting who hook up and what transpires between them in the morning after.

DISC is an adult short. I mean that because its subject matter is not for kids.  I don’t think most parents are going to want to explain what is going on. That is not a knock, more a warning.

Beyond the subject matter, this is a good film. Once you get past the subject matter this is a well told tale about well defined people. I kind of want to see what happens next.

Recommended.