northbayfilm

With Still, Michael McGowan refuses to go gentle into that good night

admin — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 18:37:58 +0000

“What’s the right age for any of us to give up?”

Rebelle (War Witch)

admin — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 18:33:20 +0000

Hers is a story that’s being played out around the world in conflict zones where cowardly adults make children do unspeakable things.

War Witch a genre benchmark and a breakout work

admin — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 18:31:20 +0000

Canadian director Kim Nguyen’s drama centers on a 12-year-old African girl, who is abducted from her village by vicious armed rebels and forced to wage war as a child soldier.

Rebelle: Far more than a war film

admin — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 17:46:40 +0000

It’s beautifully rendered and familiar, a Western version of blanket African desolation in all its humanity, poetry and need for help.

Stories We Tell — a probing, emotionally devastating documentary

admin — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 19:24:00 +0000

Stories We Tell is a poignant experience for the viewer and was more painful for the director

A gripping tale, full of richness, tenderness and emotional complexity

admin — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:06:12 +0000

it is a relief, and in fact a thrill, to report that her new film is a joy.

Family secrets, universal truths

admin — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:59:58 +0000

Stories We Tell makes “documentary” seem the most limiting of labels. Sarah Polley’s brave quest to uncover her family’s deepest secrets unfolds like a thriller, one where the resolution is literally part of her DNA

A provocative bit of post-modern storytelling…

admin — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:53:14 +0000

It shouldn’t have worked, this manic mix of home movie footage, a Greek chorus of Sarah Polley’s siblings and friends as well as Polley’s father himself all sharing this sprawling story about the secrets of Diane Polley, wife, actress and mother of five.

STORIES WE TELL

admin — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:58:49 +0000

In the few short years since acclaimed Canadian actor Sarah Polley first revealed her remarkable talents as a writer and director, audiences have already come to expect the aesthetic rigour and reserved yet deeply felt emotion she brings to her studies of human relationships. In her first two features, Away From Her and Take This Waltz, she rendered the complexities of intimacy and desire with the eloquence and control of filmmakers with far more experience. Away From Her in particular asked questions about how we can know ourselves or assess our lives if we can’t agree on the events of the past. Memory is truth — at least emotional truth. And nowhere in life are shared memories more fiercely contested than in the family.

Stories We Tell, Polley’s maiden voyage into the world of documentary, is at heart a personal essay on the intractable subjects of truth and memory. Using a combination of archival footage, still photos and testimon-ials in a captivating visual assemblage, Polley examines the disagreements and varying narratives of a single family as they look back on decades-old events.

The responses from the “storytellers” chosen to share their version of things are heartfelt, revealing and even charmingly funny. The result is a lively and richly textured documentary that seamlessly blends past and present, the real and the imagined. Devoid of sensationalism and filled with tender and powerful moments, the film also serves as a loving homage to one key player who is no longer here to share her version.

REBELLE

admin — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:57:49 +0000

Winner of the Best Actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival, Rebelle is an extraordinary portrait of survival. Director Kim Nguyen spent ten years bringing this story to the screen, basing his script on the stories of actual child soldiers and shooting entirely on location in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are introduced to fourteen-year-old Komona (Rachel Mwanza) as she recounts the past two years of her life to her unborn child. Abducted by a rebel army that invades her small, ramshackle village, Komona is forced to commit an unthinkable act — shooting her own parents — before being dragged off into the jungle. Over the next several months, she is inducted into the brutal lifestyle of the child soldier: she is beaten repeatedly, taught to fire an AK-47, and forced to dig for coltan, a mineral used in the production of electronic devices, the sale of which helps fund the rebel insurgency.

One day, after drinking “magic milk,” Komona has a vision of her parents, who warn her of danger ahead. Heeding the apparitions’ advice, she is the only person to escape unscathed from a ferocious firefight. Impressed by her premonitory powers, the warlord Great Tiger bestows Komona with the title of “War Witch” — which earns her both privileges in the camp and the threat of harsh punishment if her “powers” fail. When Komona befriends fellow soldier Magicien (Serge Kanyinda), she seems to have found an escape. The two soon run away together and eventually fall in love — but the war is never far away, and their romantic idyll is cut short when they are recaptured by the rebels. Still haunted by the ghosts of her parents and returned to the tyranny of her former life, Komona soon becomes pregnant and struggles to find a ray of hope in her desperate situation.

This is undeniably grim material, but Nguyen leavens it with delicacy and tact, conveying violence by implication and atmosphere rather than through direct depiction. The performances from the mostly nonprofessional cast are vivid and authentic, particularly the extraordinary Mwanza’s portrayal of Komona, which won her the Best Actress prize in Berlin. Heartfelt and helplessly moving, Rebelle guides us through the harsh world of a young girl whose circumstances are tragic, yet whose story is one of formidable courage and unquenchable hope.