Category: GFF strand – Pioneer

An Indian retelling of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Kia, an autistic teenage girl, investigates the death of Cosmos, a pregnant cat. The movie is beautiful but has no pacing at all.

An Iranian film about a doctor who becomes obsessed with idea that he might be responsible for the death of a boy after they are in a minor car accident together. This despite the fact that the boy is found to have died of botulism from eating tainted meat and didn’t die until days after the accident. This despite the fact the accident was relatively minor, and not the doctor’s fault in the first place. But psychologically it rings true, because it is about the doctor’s guilt at not having declared the accident at the time of the autopsy, and feeling like he got away with something due to his silence. A good film.

A dramatised biopic of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s teenage years. I’d say it’s probably best to come to this movie with no idea about who Jeffrey Dahmer is, and just see it as a character study of a disturbed young man missing opportunities to reach out for help. Otherwise, it is a bit unsettling watching such a sympathetic portrayal of a man who committed some of the most horrendous murders.

What’s good about the movie is it doesn’t really mention the murders until the end, on a black screen right before the credits, and then with no details about nature of the deaths. What I could have done without is the jaunty soft rock play-out music still going over the information.

By not really referencing the murders, the film can simply be a drama about teenage alienation, and the lack of communication and emotional support within male teenage friendships. 

An engaging film about an Iranian guy who tries to get his green card in Denmark but seducing women in the hopes of marrying them.

It’s an interesting look at race and gender and power. For him, these white women hold his life in their hands, they can decide if he stays and prospers here or gets deported back to Iran. They have all the power. For the women, he uses them, betrays them and humiliates them, it completely destroys one woman and her family. He has all the power. There’s no easy way to reconcile this.

It’s also a love story, with a sympathetic if morally ambiguous main character, whose past sins are steadily catching up with him.

A film about homelessness and parenthood. A woman tries to provide what life she can for her son while they flit between motel and squat, selling fighting cocks with her violent boyfriend.

What I liked about this was its portrayal of neglect and abuse as not necessarily the product of people but of the practicalities of poverty. Of course the boy’s gonna be left all day alone, who has money to pay for childcare? When the boy accidentally lets one of the birds out and catches a nasty cut from its talon trying to retrieve it, what are you gonna do, attend to the boy or catch the bird? The bird’s worth 3000 dollars. The cut will heal. Want me to tell you that that’s not the way things are?

The mother struggles to negotiate the inescapable truths of their lives while attempting to leave a crack open for hope to enter through. Solid film.

A movie about a woman struggling to cope after losing her friend to suicide. This film is positively seething with grief. It’s raw and brutal. It also manages to be blackly comic in a very Scottish way. I really liked it.

There are bits I was a bit hm on. At one point I did think, “Jesus, seems like nearly everyone she bumps into is thinking about offing themselves.” And then I thought about my own experience, and was like, yeah, that probably is about right. While suicide is billed as being rare, it and its close calls aren’t really. I stay in Glasgow, the suicide capital of Scotland.

There are other bits that I also wavered on. There is a scene towards the end with heavily implied sexual violence, which the film does do the right thing of stating outrightly as rape. Still, I could have done without it.

There is also a character who presents as a gay man for the majority of the film, then latterly comes out as a trans woman. The actor is a cis man and I couldn’t help but think, “Here we go again.” I grant that there are certain restrictions with making a low-budget movie with your mates that big-budget Hollywood movies have no excuse for, but it seemed like another example of a trans part going to a cis actor.

Other than that though, I thought it was excellent. Really moving and also funny and also hard to watch. A tricky thing to get right, but it worked.

A movie about two rich white girls who grew apart due to one’s psychopathy, but now reunite to murder a douchebag stepdad. Surprisingly funny and enjoyable. Also good to see for Anton Yelchin’s last performance.

A sleepy dreamlike tale of a young boy getting lost in the woods.

An Afghani film about a female chief of police who prevents a girl being stoned to death in a Taliban-controlled area. Under pressure from Tabilan leaders and businessmen, her husband is told to bring her to heal and their fight results in her being arrested and sentenced to death for killing him in self-defence. It is done in best eastern soap opera style, really playing to the back row. I really liked the leading actress though, Leena Alam, who does her best to bring a dignified performance when it all goes a bit over-the-top.

A lovely quiet sigh of a film, about grief. A brother and sister bury their father and then find three elderly men have shown up at the family farm. The three brothers were the farm’s previous owners and now want the land back so they can die and be buried there. The struggle between all these nice, sincere characters is the earnest yearning for home and its ability to provide peace in the midst of grief.