NIGHTSIREN (2022) Fantastic Fest

A woman returns home after many years after the death of her mother. The towns folk don’t know what to make of her and are wary of her after she takes up residence in the abandoned home of the local witch.

Nominally this is supposed to be a film about witches and things that go bump in the night. The reality is that this is less horror film than a look at superstition and how our pasts affect us and the choices we made.  This is more a drama with a supernatural tinge and we are so much better for it.

NIGHTSIRENS is one of the great surprises of the 2022 film year. It’s a “genre” film that really isn’t, even if it hits all the marks. It’s a wonderful character study of a young woman haunted by her past. It is also a killer thriller from literally the first minute when something happens that makes you sit up and go “hello”. It was at that moment I had to see where the film was going because it was clear that nothing was off the table.

I love this film.

What I love about this film is that it has a great deal going on. Its film that has a great deal on its mind. It’s a look at life in a backwoods town, a look at a the male female dynamic, a look at motherhood (and the loss of it), at superstition, and how we view all of that.  Several weeks on and numerous discussions I’m still turning the film over in my mind and still trying to sell the film to anyone who is willing to  listen to me talk about its wonders.

This film is a must.

My Sunny Maad (2021) Animation First 2022

MY SUNNY MAAD is the story of a Czech woman who finds her country men boring and ends up falling madly in love with an Afghan man. After a two month courtship she moves to  Kabul and they marry.  As she tries to adjust to her new life she discovers that she and her husband can not have children and they take in a local boy with health issues.

This is a look at life in Afghanistan between the times of the Taliban. It’s a sober and bracing story of life in place most people only know from the news. It’s a film full of life, both the good and bad. We get a look at the patriarchal society that existed there even as women were given more freedom.  But we also get a loving portrait of some really good people.

This is a film that is very much for more mature audiences. Despite how the images look this is not a film for kids since it is dealing with some very serious subjects. It’s a film that is similar to, but lighter than SWALLOWS OF KABUL and FLEE.

I really like the film a great deal, however I know I need another viewing to fully unpack everything that is going on in the film. I also know I will need to space my next viewing out for a bit because this film has some deeply emotional and hard hitting moments.

Recommended

I Olga Hepnarová (2016) Fantasia 2016

I am a loner. A destroyed woman. A woman destroyed by people... I have a choice - to kill myself or to kill others. I choose TO AVENGE MY HATERS. It would be too easy to leave this world as an unknown suicide victim. Society is too indifferent, rightly so. My verdict is: I, Olga Hepnarová, the victim of your bestiality, sentence you to death.

True story of Olga Hepnarova who drove a truck into a crowd of people in 1973 killing 8. She ended up being the last woman person executed in Czechoslovakia. Stark black and white film shows us the story of a young woman neglected by her parents and bullied by society who reacted in a violent way to force society to take a look at the way it views the down trodden.

Or that's what it seems to be trying to say. The trouble for me is that Hepnarova is clearly not all there. The film begins with her first suicide attempt and goes on to show us in the psychiatric hospital and her life after that. She is already an individual who is standing slightly apart from the rest of the world and her interactions with the world show us a person who has trouble fitting in. She is challenging the world as much as she is being victimized by it. She is not quite the victim of the world that film would make us believe she is. This isn't to say she deserved hat happened at any point  only to point out she had issues that made connecting difficult and its understandable why some people struck back at here.

I think the problem is that writer/directors Petr Kazda and Tomas Weinreb have framed the film action more to make a point rather than give us a fair idea of anything. Everyone Olga encounters is cold to her and her presence is always framed to make her the outsider.  One can see the hands of the directors at work. It never feels real and is more theatrical art than a film because its so clearly manipulating things for effect and to make a point rather than show what happened.

I like this film to some degree but I find it is something I admire more in the craft of the making than in the viewing.

The film screens again at Fantasia on the 25th. For tickets and more information go here.