Women’s Films at Sundance

Being a freelance blogger, I don’t have the funds to travel to film festivals.  Sundance is one place I would love to be at because they have a lot of women centric films and women directed films.  I went once, years ago, and it was so cold.  The irony is that it’s even colder in NYC today than it is in Sundance.

I’ve been reading all the stuff about the highly anticipated films and not surprisingly most of the films people are excited by are by and about guys.  So if I was at Sundance here’s the list of films I would be seeing.  Hopefully some of these films will make it to the theatres.  (All description are from the Sundance website)

Amreeka
Written and Directed by Cherien Dabis
Director Cherien Dabis’s auspicious debut feature, Amreeka, is a warm and lighthearted film about one Palestinian family’s tumultuous journey into Diaspora amidst the cultural fallout of America’s war in Iraq. Muna Farah, a Palestinian single mom, struggles to maintain her optimistic spirit in the daily grind of intimidating West Bank checkpoints, the constant nagging of a controlling mother, and the haunting shadows of a failed marriage. Everything changes one day when she receives a letter informing her that her family has been granted a U.S. green card. Reluctant to leave her homeland, but realizing it may be the only way to secure a future for Fadi, her teenage son, Muna decides to quit her job at the bank and visit her relatives in Illinois to see about a new life in a land that gives newcomers a run for their money. Dabis weaves an abundance of humor and levity into this tale of struggle, displacement, and nostalgia and draws an absorbing and irresistibly charming performance from actress Nisreen Faour as Muna, who stands at the heart of this tale. Amreeka glows with the truth and magic of everyday life and signals the arrival of an exciting, new directorial talent.

Push
Directed by Lee Daniels
With sheer audacity and utter authenticity, director Lee Daniels tackles Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire and creates an unforgettable film that sets a new standard for cinema of its kind. Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is a high-school girl with nothing working in her favor. She is pregnant with her father’s child—for the second time. She can’t read or write, and her schoolmates tease her for being fat. Her home life is a horror, ruled by a mother (Mo’Nique) who keeps her imprisoned both emotionally and physically. Precious’s instincts tell her one thing: if she’s ever going to break from the chains of ignorance, she will have to dig deeply into her own resources.Don’t be misled—Push is not a film wallowing in the stillness of depression; instead, it vibrates with the kind of energy derived only from anger and hope. The entire cast are amazing; they carry out a firestorm of raw emotion. Daniels has drawn from them inimitable performances that will rivet you to your seat and leave you too shocked to breathe. If you passed Precious on the street, you probably wouldn’t notice her. But when her story is revealed, as Daniels does in this courageous film, you are left with an indelible image of a young woman who—with creativity, humor, and ferocity—finds the strength to turn her life around.

Toe to Toe
Written and Directed by Emily Abt
Emily Abt’s emotionally powerful feature film, Toe to Toe, tells the story of a love/hate relationship between lacrosse mates Tosha and Jesse, two senior girls at a competitive Washington, D.C., prep school. Tosha is a fiercely determined African American scholarship student from Anacostia, one of Washington’s poorest areas, while Jesse is a privileged, but troubled, white girl from Bethesda, who deals with promiscuous tendencies that pull her toward self-destruction. The two forge a close and genuine friendship on the field, but that bond is tested when the obstacles presented by societal circumstances threaten to tear them apart. Abt draws penetrating performances from bright, young talents Louisa Krause (Jesse) and Sonequa Martin (Tosha). Together they craft a complex story rich with nuance and authenticity, avoiding predictability and challenging tired racial narratives. Inspired by the disturbing fact that interracial friendships end at age 14 for 87 percent of American teenagers, Toe to Toe is a powerful reminder of the transforming power of honesty and the way that those who test us often make us better.

Helen
Written and Directed by Sandra Nettelbeck
Featuring a riveting performance by the gifted Ashley Judd and infused with intelligence and detail by Sandra Nettelbeck, a storyteller who clearly knows intimately the parameters of this universe, Helen transcends the usual limitations that besiege portraits of mental illness and depression. In truth, for all that we’ve learned about depression—its causes, its cures, and the breadth of its affliction—the old clichés and stigmas still dominate our tales and popular culture. What Nettelbeck and her colleagues have accomplished is an unapologetically moving examination that offers no simplistic answers and refrains from reductively singular happy endings. Helen focuses on a woman with an apparently perfect life: a successful academic, she seems happily married with a wonderful daughter. But we witness a sudden breakdown and a journey that is enigmatic and heartbreakingly real. When solutions prove elusive and Helen is hospitalized, she forges a relationship with Mathilda, a fellow traveler who both aids and traumatizes her life’s course. When death seems the only answer, and the safe haven of family gives no respite, the pain of bipolarity is exhausting and overwhelming. Told with poignancy and insight—and ultimately concluding with as much courage as inevitable sadness—Helen is the work of artists whose craft and sensibility are special.

Pomegranates and Myrrh
Written and Directed by Najwa Najjar
Dancer Kamar’s joyful wedding to Zaid is followed almost immediately by Zaid’s imprisonment in an Israeli jail for refusing to give up his land. Free-spirited Kamar wants to support her husband and be a dutiful wife but struggles with the idea of giving up dance and her own dreams. Matters are complicated when a new dance instructor, Kais, returns to the studio after many years in Lebanon and takes a special interest in Kamar. She struggles to deal with the weight of Kais’s attention, which brings to the surface her attempts to balance her own desires with her duties as the wife of a prisoner. Like the character of Kamar herself, Najwa Najjar’s filmmaking (in her debut feature) is matter-of-fact about Kamar’s situation. Instead of manufacturing melodrama, Najjar stays focused on her protagonist’s insistence on seeing her life, like anyone else’s, as an opportunity for joy. The constant interference of the external conflict—her husband’s arrest, the squatters on her land, and the soldiers filling the streets—is an unavoidable aspect of Kamar’s existence but one that she will not allow to deter her. Najjar’s intimate storytelling and Yasmine Al Massri’s sensitive portrayal of Kamar create a film that addresses honestly the way a woman might face the realities of life in modern-day Palestine while refusing to be defined by them.

Cliente
Written and Directed by Josiane Balasko
French cinema has never been shy about depicting female desire. Cliente, Josiane Balasko’s matter-of-fact comedy about the commodification of love, is no exception. An elegant entrepreneur in her fifties, Judith unapologetically engages male escorts to minister to her sexual pleasure. When she answers Patrick’s ad, she’s charmed by the sensitive fellow in the classic suit; it’s as if he stepped right out of the Nouvelle Vague films of her youth. But from the get-go, things with this good-natured gent aren’t as efficient as with other lovers. Not only is he unable to sustain an erection on their second date, but power dynamics and his private life begin to muddy their arrangement.At home in the Paris projects, Patrick is buckling under pressure to support a gaggle of demanding relatives, including his adorable wife, Fanny, who’s getting wise to his secret financial scheme. And just as you think they’ll be propelled onto predictable paths befitting characters in a less-playful, less-astute story, Judith, Patrick, and Fanny veer into murky emotional terrain, reluctantly getting tangled in a bittersweet triangle.Part bedroom farce, class melodrama, and feminist foray, Cliente is elevated by the superb performances of Eric Caravaca and Nathalie Baye. It boldly illuminates the challenge of contemporary women to define satisfaction on their own terms—somewhere between autonomy and interdependence.

An Education
Directed by Lone Scherfig
The 1960s were a time of change. So is life when you are 16. That combination propels An Education, set in London in 1961, and makes it an unforgettable coming-of-age story.Attractive, bright, 16-year-old Jenny is stifled by the tedium of adolescent routine; she can’t wait for adult life to begin. One rainy day her suburban existence is upended by the arrival of a much older suitor, David. Urbane and witty, David instantly charms Jenny and introduces her to a glittering new world of classical concerts, art auctions, smoky bars, and late-night suppers with his attractive friends. He replaces Jenny’s traditional education with his own more-dangerous version. Just as the family’s long-held dream of getting their brilliant daughter into Oxford has seemed within reach, Jenny is tempted by another kind of life. Will David be the making of Jenny, or her undoing? Every so often a performance comes along that is so captivating that it becomes an instant classic. Carey Mulligan’s enchanting performance as Jenny is one of them. Channeling the spirit of a young Holly Golightly, she makes Jenny’s character blossom on screen from a girl into a woman, and transforms herself from an actor into a star. Director Lone Scherfig’s complete understanding of Nick Hornby’s extraordinary script brings its many dimensions to vivid life.

The Glass House
Written by Melissa Hibbard
The Glass House skillfully examines the mostly hidden lives of young women, teetering on the fringes of Iranian society in modern Tehran. Marginalized by their families, these women have found a saving grace in a day center formed by an Iranian expatriate. Marjaneh Halati opened the center to give downtrodden young women a voice, thus empowering them with the life skills they need to succeed on their own. Many of these teens previously spent time in a jail, hospital, or state home because they had no other options. Sussan is 20 years old and suffers from memory loss and a stutter as a result of a blow to the head either from her sigheh (temporary husband) or her abusive brother. Mitra is learning how to avoid confrontation with her father, who takes out his frustration on his 16-year-old daughter. Nazila, 19, finds an outlet for her anguish by recording as a rap singer, which is forbidden by law. The young women see Marjaneh as both a mother figure and a mentor and cherish her frequent visits from London. In superb cinema vérité style spanning 18 months, The Glass House deftly portrays a spirit of hopefulness. These former victims are given the chance to express themselves and transform their difficult circumstances into new beginnings.

Quest for Honor
Directed by Mary Ann Smothers Bruni
“We were raised to believe in resistance, persistence, and confrontation. That’s why I know I can handle anything.” So says one of the women in Quest for Honor, a searing and necessary documentary about the still-prevalent practice of honor killings in the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. Kurds number more than 26 million and are believed to be the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country. Despite much progress politically and economically, honor killings are routinely cited as the major human-rights violation among Kurds. Since 1991, statistics suggest that more than 12,000 women, mostly between 13 and 18, have met a gruesome death at the hands of relatives, usually the men of the family, who are convinced the victim has impugned the family’s honor. The film centers on cases taken up by the Women’s Media and Education Center in Sulaimaniyah, Kurdish Iraq. Texas-based photographer and author Mary Ann Smothers Bruni’s film marks her evolution from still photographer to filmmaker. While the deaths themselves are shocking in their sheer brutality, perhaps more striking is the ease with which the men involved in the killings speak about their unforgiving attitudes toward the victims. Deeply disturbing, yet profoundly hopeful, in its belief that change in centuries-old attitudes is possible, Quest for Honor asks us to imagine a day when women everywhere can live in honor, and not fear for their lives.

Rough Aunties
Directed by Kim Longinotto
Jackie, Mildred, Eureka, Sdudla, and Thuli are the women behind Bobbi Bear, a nonprofit organization based in Durban, South Africa, that counsels sexually abused children and works to bring their abusers to justice. Born out of a recognition of cultural stigmas that discourage reporting abuse and inadequate methods of communicating with young victims, Bobbi Bear developed a method of letting children use teddy bears to explain their abuse. Since 1992, the multiracial staff has become the fearless and powerful voice for those victims who would otherwise continue to live in fear, powerless against their oppressors and ignored by the legal system. Director Kim Longinotto (The Day I Will Never Forget screened at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival) adeptly and intimately follows Bobbi Bear staff in difficult direct sessions with children and consultations with family members, and on raids with authorities to arrest the perpetrators of these heinous acts. Facing tragedy daily as part of their advocacy work and, heartbreakingly for some, in their personal lives, the women draw strength from each other and find hope despite the suffering around them.Equally as compassionate to the young victims as they are steadfast in their pursuit of justice, these five exceptional women have found themselves transformed by their mission into “rough aunties,” crossing barriers of race, culture, and socioeconomic status to become formidable agents of change in their community.

The Greatest
Written and Directed by Shana Feste
Crying your eyes out at the movies used to be commonplace. But the difficulty of affecting a contemporary audience emotionally demonstrates how much respect a work like The Greatest engenders: it is an enormously moving, intelligent exploration of pain and grieving, a film that will touch you and stay with you.The death of their teenage son, Bennett, in a car crash is almost too much for the Brewer family to bear, not just because his was a life of such promise but also because the impact of his death unleashes the turmoil that was just beneath the surface of their lives. His mother becomes obsessed and can’t let go; his father, in turn, can’t face it at all; and his brother’s secondary status is magnified and entrenched. And when Bennett’s girlfriend appears, the family must come to grips with circumstances that complicate their loss even further. An ensemble film that is the debut of Shana Feste, a particularly talented young filmmaker, this sensitive and heartbreaking feature showcases Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan at their best and launches a career for young actress Carey Mulligan that is certain to be impressive. This is one of the standout works of this Festival and is as fine a debut as we can present.

Motherhood
Written and Directed by Katherine Dieckmann
Eliza Welch is having a really bad day. A middle-aged mom in post-9/11 Manhattan with two kids, an oblivious husband, and an incontinent dog, Eliza is a consummate multitasker facing the soul-crushing fear that her dreams of being a writer are going down the diaper bin.Motherhood takes place in a single day—a day when Eliza becomes a magnet for the entire city’s hostility. She has to throw her daughter’s sixth birthday party, battle for a parking space, chase her toddler son, navigate playground politics, repair a botched birthday cake, contemplate a fling with a sexy messenger half her age, juggle a career-changing opportunity, find time to have a breakdown, briefly run away from home, and realize what is truly valuable in her life—all in one day. As Eliza, the irresistibly charming Uma Thurman is up to the task. Anthony Edwards and Minnie Driver lend expert support. With a keen eye for the delicious details that define authenticity, Motherhood depicts a world we may think we know and injects it with freshness and humor. Written and directed by Katherine Dieckmann, Motherhood is a funny and poignant comedy about one woman’s quest to hold on to her true self as she embraces the foibles, heartache, and joys of being a mother.

The best of the rest: Women directed and women centric films (and one film about a make coach directing a girls basketball team cause I love those)
The September Issue
Directed by RJ Cutler
Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue for 20 years, is the most powerful and polarizing figure in fashion. Larger than life and more complex than fiction, Wintour embodies a fascinating contradiction of passion and perfectionism as she reigns over a dizzying array of designers, models, photographers, and editors. Director R.J. Cutler delivers a rare insider account of the nine months leading up to the printing of the highly anticipated September issue of the magazine, which promises to be the biggest one ever. He takes us behind the scenes at fashion week, to Europe and back, on shoots and reshoots, and into closed-door staff meetings, bearing witness to an arduous and sometimes emotionally demanding process. At the eye of this annual fashion hurricane is the two-decade relationship between Wintour and Grace Coddington, incomparable creative director and genius stylist. They are perfectly matched for this age-old conflict between creator and curator. Through them, we see close up the delicate creative chemistry it takes to remain at the top of the ever-changing fashion field. Cutler cleverly deconstructs the creative process as it plays out in the hollowed halls of Vogue, lined with racks of couture. In The September Issue, his access and insight are impressive and make us aware that he is offering us a privileged glimpse into a world many dream about but few see.

The Anarchist’s Wife
Directed by Marie Noëlle, Peter Sehr, Written by Marie Noëlle
In a story spanning several decades, The Anarchist’s Wife depicts the way the marriage between an idealistic young activist and his glamorous wife is dominated by shifting political powers during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Justo’s (Juan Diego Botto) political activism separates the couple for years as he goes into hiding and is ultimately deported to a concentration camp, but Manuela (Maria Valverde) steadfastly clings to as much of their old lives as possible in rapidly deteriorating circumstances, raising their children and facing multiple tragedies on her own. After the war, Manuela uproots her life to rush to Justo’s side, only to find that she must again share him with a cause.In this historical drama that incorporates archival footage, a rich score, and memorable visuals to carefully evoke Spain in the 1930s and ’40s, husband-and-wife filmmakers Peter Sehr and Marie Noelle employ impressive historical detail in this story of a single family that finds that unyielding devotion does not come without a price. The film celebrates the couple’s single-minded loyalties— Manuela to her husband and Justo to his beliefs—but also depicts the negative repercussions, especially on the couple’s headstrong young daughter, Paloma (Ivana Baquero). Told through Paloma’s point of view, the story of her parents’ undying love and political commitment is at once wholly romantic and somewhat bittersweet.

Children of Invention
Written and Directed by Tze Chun
For immigrants, the American Dream has always been a symbol of success that meant achieving a new life far removed from past hardships. In his feature film debut, director Tze Chun explores this age-old perception through the eyes of a Chinese American family in suburban Boston.Single mother Elaine Cheng struggles to support her two young children, Raymond and Tina, by juggling various sales jobs. When another one falls through, the family finds itself homeless and must seek refuge in an unfinished apartment building. This latest predicament seems all too familiar to precocious Raymond, who dreams of taking care of his mother and sister with the fortunes garnered from his inventions. Little Tina, however, remains oblivious to their troubles, thanks to her mother’s careful protection. Meanwhile, lured by promises of easy cash, Elaine finds herself drawn into another pyramid scheme, one that will jeopardize the welfare of the two things that matter the most: her children. Chun delicately explores the immigrant experience through parallel tales as Elaine and Raymond seek solutions to their dilemma. As they do so, age becomes irrelevant as they clutch for the elusive brass ring that always seems just out of reach.

Before Tomorrow
Directed by Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Madeline Piujuq Ivalu
It’s circa 1840 in the northernmost tundra of Inuit-land. In the Arctic Circle, some Inuit tribes still have never met any white people, although rumors circulate about what they might be like, where they come from, and why they are there. As the Europeans encroach upon the territory and the Inuit clans go about their nomadic life, two elder women and a young boy go to an isolated island to perform the task of drying their clan’s cache of fish in preparation for the long winter. The clan promises to fetch them after the fish are dried and before the water freezes over, but as the fall hunting season ends and they fail to return, something appears to have gone very wrong. In their first feature, Madeline Piujuq Ivalu and Marie-Hélène Cousineau of the Arnait Video Collective base their film on the novel For Morgendagen by Danish writer Jørn Riel. They combine traditional Inuit storytelling traditions with European cinema techniques to portray a story of a grandmother and a grandson who fend for themselves after tragedy strikes their clan.With stellar performances by Madeline Piujuq Ivalu as Ningiuq and Paul-Dylan Ivalu as Maniq, viewers experience the harshness of the tundra and the love of family in the most trying of times.

Dada’s Dance
Directed by Zhang Yuan, Written by Li Xiaofeng
Dada is the neighborhood coquette. She lives with her divorced mother, works at a pool hall, and is a tease to the local men, including the boy next door, Zhoa, who has a crush on her. One morning she catches him spying on her as she dances, but she continues to flirt with him. Her mother’s lecherous new boyfriend also has eyes for her. But when she spurns his advances, he reveals that she’s adopted. Hastily packing her bag, Dada heads out of town with Zhoa in search of her birth mother. Picking up on many of the themes that have fascinated him over the course of his career, Zhang Yuan (Little Red Flowers screened at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival) returns with a stylized rite-of-passage story that reflects broadly on contemporary love, disaffected youth, and existential malaise. As always, Zhang’s stylization is distinctive—here most notably in the sensual imagery, eclectic music, and nocturnal motif that seems to swallow his characters even in the daytime. Dada inhabits a world of obscurity and ambivalence, where life has no gravity. Though Zhoa takes her to the adoption center, she laughs and runs off. She’s unable to take anything seriously, even Zhoa who truly loves her. Although she shows outward signs of maturity, we’re left to wonder whether the dance has really changed.

The Queen and I
Directed by Nahid Persson Sarvestani
When Nahid Persson Sarvestani, an Iranian exile, set out to make a documentary about Farrah, the wife of the shah of Iran, she expected to encounter her opposite. As a child, Persson Sarvestani had lived in dire poverty, watching Farrah’s wedding as if it were a fairy tale. As a teenager, she joined the Communist faction of Khomeini’s revolution that deposed the shah, sending him and his family volleying from country to country. When Khomeini betrayed his promise for democracy, imposing more violent measures than the shah had, Persson Sarvestani was also forced to flee. Thirty years later, she needs key questions answered and goes directly to the source. Surprisingly, Queen Farrah welcomes her as a fellow refugee from their beloved homeland, granting unprecedented access. Over the next year and a half, Persson Sarvestani enters the queen’s world, planning to challenge the shah’s ideology; instead, she must rethink her own. When Persson Sarvestani’s prior opposition to the shah surfaces, the queen shuts down filming. Yet, in the struggle to understand each other’s experiences, an unlikely friendship has blossomed. Confronting Farrah about the shah’s repression has become not only a political conflict but a personal one, and Persson Sarvestani’s objectivity is shaken. In this gripping, poignant consideration of subjectivity as truth, we learn that people write history. And can also heal it. The Queen and I couldn’t be more relevant as we reach across our own political aisles.

Boy Interrupted
Directed by Dana Perry
Boy Interrupted is a film that raises questions. It asks how a young boy can end his life at the tender age of 15. It struggles to find answers about what kind of family he had and the life he led. By its very nature, it is a naked display of its filmmaker’s personal life at its most revealing and perhaps disturbing. How can a mother, we may ask, make a film about the death of her son? What defines this film as a remarkably unique and truth-telling achievement is the way it explores how filmmaking can create closure for its creators as well as its audience. Dana Perry has gathered home movies, photographs, and a variety of different documents to tell the story of her son, Evan: his bipolar illness, his life, and his death, and their impact on those who loved him the most. She interviews his siblings and friends, his doctors and his teachers, and in the process, she chronicles a harrowing and difficult journey. The camera provides insight and revelation, and yet Boy Interrupted is a film that is also full of despair. The film’s saving grace is that it functions, in the final analysis, as therapy for both its viewers and its subjects at a most fundamental level. It is an essentially human story, and a parent’s worst nightmare.

El General
Directed by Natalia Almada
“How do we reconcile the contradictions between our personal family memories and our country’s collective memory?” When filmmaker Natalia Almada asks this question, the answer is her latest film, a tour de force of cinematic imagination bristling with beauty, contradiction, and the epic scope of Mexico’s last 100 years of history. Stunningly realized, Almada’s filmic meditation is framed as a search through the memory of her grandmother, whose reminiscences revolve around her father, Plutarco Elías Calles, one of Mexico’s most prominent and controversial presidents. A general during the Mexican Revolution and then president from 1924 to 1928, Calles was known both for his deeds as a revolutionary hero and the brutal tactics he employed during his presidency. His life and legacy embody both the promise and betrayal of Mexico’s poignant history. For Almada, the exploration of her extraordinary personal link to Mexico’s past becomes a lens through which she explores the qualities of cinema that have formed the fulcrum of her artistic practice over her career. Archival and original footage, Hollywood films, and still photographs are woven with original music and meticulously edited audio archives to reveal a hypnotic and deeply compassionate portrait of the Mexican people and the forces that have shaped their country.

Shouting Fire
Directed by Liz Garbus
During the 1950s, McCarthy’s red scare closed down avenues of dissent for a decade. Americans were pitted against one another. Political opinions became ammunition. Since 9/11, the First Amendment has again been under attack. Liz Garbus’s Shouting Fire, a riveting exploration of the current state of free speech in America, is crucially relevant.Interweaving historical cases—The New York Times’s fight to publish the Pentagon Papers and the Nazis’ insistence on marching in Skokie, among them—with contemporary free-speech infringements, the film documents the way both the Right and the Left have lashed out in fear. In the stories of a left-wing professor fired for provocative remarks about 9/11, an Arab American principal made to resign after discussing the word “”intifada,”" and Christian schoolkids suspended for wearing Bible-quoting T-shirts, there’s an ironic pattern. When threatened by an outside enemy, perceived or real, we often demonize each other, undermining the very freedom we seek to protect. We think of First Amendment rights as inviolable; in fact, they’re profoundly vulnerable. Mixing vibrant pacing with an elegant journalistic style, Garbus orchestrates this urgent matter like a rallying cry for action. As her father, legendary attorney Martin Garbus, wisely warns, if we don’t fight for our freedoms every day, we will lose them.

No Impact Man
Directed by Laura Gabbert, Justin Schein
GLOBAL WARMING! The headlines scream it; the thermometer confirms it; but few of us do much to address it. Author Colin Beavan and his family are pictures of liberal complacency—sophisticated, takeout-addicted New Yorkers who refuse to let moral qualms interfere with good old-fashioned American consumerism. Then Colin turns things upside down. For his next book, he announces he’s becoming No Impact Man, testing whether making zero environmental impact adversely affects happiness. The hitch is he needs his wife, Michelle—an espresso-guzzling, Prada-worshiping Business Week writer—and their toddler to join the experiment.A year without electricity, cars, toilet paper, and nonlocal food isn’t going to be a walk in the park. Or is it? As Michelle contends with caffeine and shopping withdrawal, compost worms, and defending her dreams in the face of Colin’s household hegemony, she’s gradually transformed by this life-without-wastefulness. Meanwhile, Colin’s numerous media appearances unleash a viral rash of criticism among bloggers and friends, raising doubts about the project’s integrity. Is it ostentatious or altruistic? Hypocritical or visionary? Whatever the conclusion, no one can deny we’re going to have to alter our habits radically to achieve sustainability. Through the intimate prism of conflict within a contemporary marriage, No Impact Man suggests that individual change can be the first step in a quantum leap toward a systemic, societal shift. And the temporary discomfort just might be worth it.

The Reckoning
Directed by Pamela Yates
Late in the twentieth century, in response to horrific atrocities igniting increasingly around the world, more than 60 countries united to launch the International Criminal Court (ICC)—the first permanent home for prosecuting perpetrators (no matter how powerful) of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.Pamela Yates’s The Reckoning follows charismatic ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo for three years across four continents as he and his team tirelessly issue arrest warrants for Lord’s Resistance Army leaders in Uganda, put Congolese warlords on trial, challenge the U.N. Security Council to help indict Sudan’s president for the Darfur massacres, and shake up the Colombian justice system. As you can imagine, building cases against genocidal criminals is no cakewalk. Moreno-Ocampo has a mandate but no police force. At every turn, he must pressure the international community to muster political clout for the cause. Like a deft thriller, The Reckoning keeps you on the edge of your seat, in this case with two riveting dramas—the prosecution of unspeakable crimes and the ICC’s fight for efficacy in its nascent years. As this tiny court in The Hague struggles to change the world and forge a new paradigm for justice, innocent victims suffer and wait. Will Moreno-Ocampo succeed? Will the world ensure that justice prevails?

We Live in Public
Directed by Ondi Timoner
Calling all voyeurs and exhibitionists! Internet pioneer Josh Harris has spent his life implementing his unique vision of the future, where technology and media dictate human social interaction and define our personal identity. At the turn of the millennium, Harris launched an art experiment called Quiet: We Live in Public. He created an artificial society in an underground bunker in the heart of New York City. More than 100 artists moved in and lived in pods under 24-hour surveillance in what was essentially a human terrarium. They defecated, had sex, shared a transparent communal shower—all on camera. On January 1, 2000, after 30 days, the project was busted by FEMA as a “millennial cult.” Undeterred, Harris struck again, this time as his own subject. Rigging his loft with 32 motion-controlled cameras, he convinced his girlfriend to allow him to record streaming video of every moment of their lives from the toilet to the bedroom. The project backfired, his relationship imploded, and Harris went broke. Mentally unhinged, he fled to an apple farm in upstate New York. Sundance award winner Ondi Timoner chronicled Harris for a decade, culling through thousands of hours of Harris’s own footage and coupling it with rousing vérité of her own. The result is a fascinating, sexy, yet cautionary, tale where we all become Big Brother.

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
Directed by Emily Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler
One of the most infamous lawyers of the twentieth century, William Kunstler liked to shake things up. Filmmakers Emily and Sarah Kunstler explore their father’s life and legacy: from middle-class family man to celebrated radical activist to “the most hated lawyer in America.”Kunstler’s resume is one for the storybooks. He fought for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and catapulted to the world stage by defending the Chicago Seven. Soon Kunstler became the go-to guy for the radical left. When inmates rioted at Attica prison or Native Americans took on the federal government at Wounded Knee, they chose Kunstler as their lawyer. In the 1970s, when Emily and Sarah were growing up, their father transitioned away from civil-rights cases. Lured to the limelight of high-profile criminal cases, Kunstler represented accused rapists, terrorists, and Mafia bosses. Being on the unpopular side of the infamous Central Park jogger trial was perhaps the linchpin that triggered his fall from grace. Was the real William Kunstler a hero or a villain? A defender of the defenseless or an egomaniac drawn to fame? Eschewing white-hat, black-hat simplicity, Emily and Sarah Kunstler share a provocative and deeply personal journey as they paint a complex portrait of a man whose life mirrors the battles that forever defined our history.

Cold Souls
Written and Directed by Sophie Barthes
In response to shiny, bigger, better American consumerism comes Cold Souls, a metaphysical tragicomedy in which souls can be extracted and traded as commodities. Balancing on a tightrope between deadpan humor and pathos, and between reality and fantasy, the film presents Paul Giamatti as himself, agonizing over his interpretation of Uncle Vanya. Paralyzed with anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by deep-freezing souls. Giamatti enlists their services, intending to reinstate his soul once he survives the performance. But complications ensue when a mysterious, soul-trafficking “mule,” transporting product to and from Russia, “borrows” Giamatti’s stored soul for an ambitious, but unfortunately talentless, soap-opera actress. Rendered soulless, he is left with no choice but to follow the trail back to bleak St. Petersburg. He comes to value that happiness isn’t merely the absence of pain, but the integration of the full range of emotion into life.Sophie Barthes’s debut feature is strikingly original, not only for its haunting concept but for its poetic execution. Inspired production design and lyrical cinematography create a melancholic, heightened world. Perfectly cast, Giamatti and a gifted ensemble maneuver seamlessly through shifting ontological landscapes without ever betraying the surrealism. With this dazzling accomplishment, Barthes establishes herself as an auteur to reckon with.

Humpday
Written and directed by Lynn Shelton
It’s been a decade since Ben and Andrew were the bad boys of their college campus. Ben has settled down and found a job, wife, and home. Andrew took the alternate route as a vagabond artist, skipping the globe from Chiapas to Cambodia. When Andrew shows up, unannounced, on Ben’s doorstep, they easily fall back into their old dynamic of heterosexual one-upmanship. After a night of perfunctory carousing, the two find themselves locked in a mutual dare: to enter an amateur porn contest. But what kind of boundary-breaking porn can two dudes make? After the booze and “big talk” run out, only one idea remains—they will have sex together…on camera. It’s not gay; it’s beyond gay. It’s not porn; it’s an art project. But how will it work? And more importantly, who will tell Anna, Ben’s wife? Judging by writer and director Lynn Shelton, it takes a talented woman to unearth the biggest ironies in the male ego. Humpday is a buddy movie gone wild. Shelton expertly mines this clever construct for every possible comedic and irreverent moment. The three lead actors deliver fine-tuned performances amidst postmodern patter and tight, crisp storytelling. Shelton’s command of her craft shines brightest when our two gentlemen finally get down to the task at hand: creating a classic “wriggle in your seat” moment of truth.

Lunch Break
Directed by Sharon Lockhart
Artist and filmmaker Sharon Lockhart is known for creating beautiful, meditative films that incorporate subtle movement and a static, photographic gaze to examine her subjects. In this daring pair of new works, Lunch Break and Exit, Lockhart explores a new approach, an insisting sense of motion that produces more of what might be described as a photographic experience. In Lunch Break, the camera is entirely untethered, slowly moving in a single tracking shot through a long corridor where workers are enjoying their lunch hour at the Bath Iron Works, a massive shipyard in Maine. In Exit, the frame constantly fills with teeming workers as they head home after a long day’s work.Lunch Break and Exit are examples of Lockhart’s timely new film and photographic series about the present state of U.S. labor. The organic rhythm of workers in the shipyard receives a lyrical examination at a juncture in American economic history that may well make such scenarios obsolete. As viewers, we must completely surrender conventional narrative expectations and let ourselves be transported into the atmosphere and idiosyncratic details of life at the shipyard. We develop a sense of comfort and sentimental camaraderie with the workers as they enjoy restful moments amidst productive labor. When the final frame passes the shutter, we have become so enmeshed with shipyard life that we don’t want it to end.

Stay the Same Never Change
Directed by Laurel Nakadate
Artist/filmmaker Laurel Nakadate’s weird and delightful first feature film, Stay the Same Never Change, is a raw, audacious effort that burns with such originality and honesty that it seems destined to become a Festival discovery. Starring amateur actors in Kansas City, and filmed in their real homes, Stay the Same Never Change is a film that is as much visual fact as narrative fiction about American heartland folk and the lives they live while wanting more. A nonlinear yarn that skips among various vignettes depicting the solitary existence of distantly connected young women, Nakadate’s film exudes a warm sense of humor as it peers into the loneliness of the girls and their desperate attempts to find affection. From a pining tween who turns to her sewing machine for creature comforts to a young woman obsessed with polar bears and Oprah, Nakadate’s characters reveal quiet lives brimming with anguish and desire, but also a fascinating ingenuity. Awkward moments of absurdity and small ruptures in their lives offer opportunities for these girls to create a new world or stretch for what is just beyond their reach. You do not have to hail from the heartland to connect with the infectious appeal of Stay the Same Never Change. If you’ve ever been a tween and pined for life and love, you will cringe with powerful personal recognition as you witness the seemingly psychotic lives of these girls.

Where is Where?
Directed by Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Finnish artist Elja Liisa-Ahtila has worked with multichannel formats since the 1990s, and her precisely structured, one-hour-long, split-screen depiction of a real incident that took place during the Algerian War of Independence from France resonates alternately with poetic imagery, literal history, and symbolic references. Where Is Where? is an experimental narrative that relates an incident that took place in the late 1950s. As a reaction to the atrocities of French colonial repression, two young Arab boys killed a French friend, a boy of their own age. Utilizing both the fictive reality of the film itself and a theatrelike set, the narrative mode breaks with traditional story time and framing to advance a complex flow of imagery and ideas. The overall collision of narrative lines comes through the perspective of a European poet: visited by Death, he gradually investigates the past to reveal the importance of the event for the present day. At once hauntingly elusive and very direct, the film artistically challenges the norms and preconceptions of reading and storytelling as well as depicting the clash of cultures and societies. Evocative and dense, Where Is Where? is ultimately a condensation of the mists of truth, a gathering of the fragments of knowledge, and perhaps a conduit for an alternate perspective.

The Works of Maria Marshall
Written and Directed by Maria Marshall
Maria Marshall’s disturbing and gorgeously composed video projections probe the psychological dimensions of cinema. Marshall often uses her two sons in the main roles of her frequently violent, but visually charming, films. Her work tackles the fundamental subjects of motherhood, socialization, and life experience and returns us to the world of childhood as a pretext to evoke the anxiety of adults. Hypnotic in their effect, Marshall’s films are presented in looped repetition and cleverly employ digital technology to create disturbing images, such as a video portrait of her young son smoking or a piece where her own skin literally crawls. Maria Marshall is a London-based artist who has created more than 35 filmic installations. She has primarily shown her video works in art galleries and museums around the world. Please join Marshall in this rare Festival appearance as she discusses her creative process and artistic practice as they evolve toward longer forms of narrative storytelling.

You Won’t Miss Me
Directed by Ry Russo-Young, Written by Ry Russo-Young, Stella Schnabel
Director Ry Russo-Young creates an engrossing character portrait in this deceptively compact, but exquisitely layered, feature.

Stella Schnabel portrays Shelly, the daughter of an emotionally removed mother. Shelly strives to make her own mark and find affirmation, but her life’s landscape is littered with dilemmas. Setting her sights on an acting career, she attends multiple auditions, but her ferocious, emotional intensity in these settings keeps her from getting jobs. Friendships, especially with other women, become fraught arenas of blaming and posing as Shelly shores up her defenses against potential hurts, however slight. Casual encounters with men offer little hope of romance. Even her supportive best friend Simon finds it necessary to draw boundaries where Shelly is concerned. Returning regularly to a psychiatric hospital, Shelly is repeatedly counseled by the resident shrink, who tries to give her a leg up on the go-nowhere cycles of her life. Is there still time?

The Winning Season

Directed by James Strouse

James Strouse, who brought Grace Is Gone to Sundance in 2007, where it won the dramatic Audience Award and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, once again displays his talent for storytelling—and his deft touch as a director—in this superbly wrought tale, The Winning Season. Sam Rockwell stars as an alcoholic ex-basketball star who is currently occupied busing tables. When he is handed the reins of a girl’s varsity team by the school’s principal, what ensues is tempestuous and trying for all concerned.

No tags for this post.