The Film Verdict: Critics Choice December 22, 2022

Weekly Critics’ Choice

BABYLON

WE ALL LOVE CINEMA

“Movies are my entire life. I need to watch movies like I need to breathe air. If I don’t watch a movie every single day I feel like there’s a part of myself that’s dying.” – I LIKE MOVIES

VERDICT: Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie lead a starry cast in Damien Chazelle's huge, ambitious but flawed love letter to Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties.

Stephen Dalton, December 17, 2022 In an awards season awash with sentimental memoirs about the wholesome magic of the movies, most notably Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans and Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, writer-director Damien Chazelle’s symphonic recreation of pre-talkies Hollywood as a riotous carnival of debauchery initially feels like a welcome blast of operatically tasteless excess. With a starry ensemble cast led by Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt, Babylon features fictionalised characters loosely based on real silent-movie figures, while the screenplay draws on sources as diverse as Singin’ In The Rain and Kenneth Anger’s notoriously salacious gossip anthology Hollywood Babylon. (Continues page 3)

That’s from Chandler Levack’s dry Canadian comedy I Like Movies, a caustically funny and sharply perceptive portrait of suburban adolescence and the toxic perils of obsessive cinephilia. It's a cautionary tale, but also a familiar one. And Levack is not alone in finding creative inspiration from her profession.

The fall festival season has been awash with movies about the movies – mainly love letters, but there’s some teeth-gnashing and angry pushback, too. As though cinema is a gift from the gods –given to those careless about what they wish for. In this season of gift-giving, TFV’s recent reviews seem so appropriate for the

holidays.

One of the biggest titles out there is, of course, Babylon, Damien Chazelle’s peek into Hollywood vice and scandal during the Roaring Twenties. Even if it turns unreasonably heart-warming and feel-good by the end, the Brad Pitt-Margot Robbie starrer is a spectacular, kaleidoscopic epic about an amoral Hollywood that no cinephile would want to miss. But for an authentic glimpse of the era, Aurora’s Sunrise uses archive footage and animation to recreate the remarkable life of the Hollywood silent film star Aurora Mardiganian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide.

(Continues page 2)

THE FABELMANS

WE ALL LOVE CINEMA (Continued)

Director Inna Sahakyan includes rediscovered clips from the actress’s 1919 film Auction of Souls, based on her own experiences in Armenia, in this moving tribute.

One story that begins and ends unequivocally well for its movie-mad hero is Steven Spielberg’s autobiographic origin tale The Fabelmans. This heady mixture of truth and fiction shows the director’s precocious talent blooming as a boy, one who always had a movie camera at hand to record family milestones and shoot Westerns and war movies. Cut to the Gujarati desert for Last Film Show, India’s current submission to the Academy Awards. In Pan Nalin’s lushly lensed vision, a poor nine-year-old boy befriends a projectionist (shades of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso); caught up in the magical allure of celluloid, like Spielberg, he decides to become a filmmaker.

BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLES OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS

There is something special about watching kids fall under the spell of those dissolving images on the big screen. Two nine-year-old classmates find a mislaid statue on a Teheran street in Winners, Hassan Nazer’s charming drama about a missing Oscar statuette (and in real life, the film has been submitted as the UK’s Best International Film contender). The gulf between illusionistic Hollywood glamour and the gritty reality of offscreen life reappears in a Mexican context in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s lightly fictionalized film autobiography Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. Rambling and dazzling by turns, this dreamlike fantasy describes a famous Mexican documaker who is about to receive a major award from the gringos in Los Angeles – now what could

BABYLON

that be? (Iñárritu has won two Best Director Academy Awards for Birdman and The Revenant).

The fact is, life and the movies can become hopelessly intertwined. Vera, the clever docu-fiction by documentarians Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, deliberately confuses a presumably fictitious story with a screen portrait of larger-than-life heroine Vera Gemma, who grew up in the shadow of her Italian cowboy-star father Giuliano Gemma. But her beloved Dad’s legacy was not always a blessing, particularly the family cult of physical beauty and public image. Vera, who became an actress and rode down the trail of film magic and illusion, found a very lonely adult life at the end of the rainbow.

BABYLON Review (Continued)

After jazz-themed stories like Whiplash and La La Land, it makes sense that Chazelle should widen his focus to try and encompass the Jazz Age on a more panoramic scale. The result is a ravishing spectacle, full of sound and fury, but ultimately signifying not much, lacking the emotional depth or socio-political context to justify its over-indulgent three-hours-plus runtime. Paramount are releasing Babylon in North America on December 23, with worldwide roll-out across January and February.

With this sprawling multi-character saga, Chazelle is clearly shooting for a kaleidoscopic Hollywood epic in the spirit of Paul Thomas Anderson or Robert Altman. That said, the most immediate parallel here is Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, particularly in the magnificent opening party sequence, which takes place in 1926 at a palatial Bel Air mansion perched atop rolling hills, a reminder of that fairly recent past when Los Angeles was a sleepy mid-sized city surrounded by desert. Filmed in a series of bravura swooping camera shots, this bacchanalian orgy features mountains of cocaine, graphic sex and kinky transgression, including a thinly veiled reworking of the sordid scandal that effectively ended the career of silent movie star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, despite him being acquitted in court for the rape and manslaughter of Virginia Rappe. Chazelle uses this spectacular party scene to introduce all his main protagonists. Robbie pays Nellie LaRoy, a Clara Bow-style wild-child starlet from the wrong side of the New Jersey tracks, desperate for fame to fill the aching void left by her tragic but fuzzily explained family background. Pitt radiates maximum matinee-idol charm as Jack Conrad, a much-married playboy movie star modelled on John Gilbert. Full Review

Our conclusion? We're all film buffs at heart and an enticing story about the business, whether light or tragic, truth or fiction is always going to exercise a special appeal. Wishing our readers the happiest of holidays full of good movies.

– The Film Verdict critics

I LIKE MOVIES

VERA

Deborah Young, September 6, 2022

Her long blond hair extensions streaming from under a cowboy hat, Vera Gemma is a riveting, larger-than-life subject in Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s Vera. Having

grown up in the shadow of her famous father Giuliano Gemma, she has reached an aimless, lonely adulthood drifting through casting calls (she’s never chosen) and

branded parties, until one day an accident brings her into the life of a family of slum-dwellers on the outskirts of Rome. As the filmmakers build a portrait of Vera’s empathy and generosity, they gradually introduce fictional elements that become indistinguishable from documentary reality, giving the film structure and narrative flash. It was a standout in the Venice Horizons section and should easily ride out of the festival world into specialized venues.

We meet Vera at her most glamorous and superficial, an eccentrically dressed figure in sexy designer wear and her omnipresent cowboy hat, which appears in various colors to match her outfits, and whose Oedipal connection to Daddy is implicit and a little dismaying. As she poses for photographers at an event on Via

VERDICT: Award-winning documentary team Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel plunge deep into the heart of the adult daughter of spaghetti western star Giuliano Gemma in a wonderfully touching film portrait that tips its Stetson at the illusory side of documentaries.

Veneto with two fingers framing her eye in a V-sign, we pigeonhole her as a narcissist fashionista of dubious taste. But when a young taxi driver takes her home and drops her in front of a fancy entrance, her loneliness is so evident, it’s painful to watch.

Vera is very conscious of what she calls her “funny face” and casually admits the “trans look” is what she likes to aim at. Her problems seem to have begun in childhood.

At home, being beautiful was a family obsession (a portrait of handsome Dad hangs over her bed) and she and her sister were even given nose jobs as kids (which they reversed when they grew up.)

But being the children of famous people was the greatest burden. Vera’s friend Asia Argento appears in a delightful scene of joyful

camaraderie. They visit the English cemetery in Rome where Asia sadly points out a tombstone reading only, “Son of Goethe”. The scene brings to mind Misunderstood, the film Asia directed about the hell of growing up with famous parents.

Vera has a film director boyfriend who talks exclusively about himself and his projects. When she won’t hand over a check for €15,000 because he went overbudget, he angrily dumps her. The incident illustrates the way people try to exploit her, not knowing what a spendthrift she is and that most of her money is gone. Exploitation is the first thing that springs to mind when Vera’s driver Walter takes her to the edge of town and, on a dangerous street, knocks over a man on a motorcycle, injuring his 8-year-old son. Ignoring the idea it could all

be a scam aimed at fleecing her, Vera takes the two to the E.R. From that starting point, she develops a touching relationship with the boy, his father and grandmother, whose scrappy world of borderline poverty seems so much warmer and more authentic than her own. But this is not a Ken Loach film.

While it’s impossible to separate the real people from the acting, Covi and Frimmel’s direction of the characters is flawless in bringing out their inner essence, which is often hidden at the beginning.

Full Review

WINNERS

VERDICT: The UK's official Oscar submission is a sweetly knowing homage to classic cinema, especially the modern masters of Iran.

Stephen Dalton, December 7, 2022 There is a pleasing symmetry in the news that Winners, a sweet little meta-drama about a missing Oscar statuette, has now been submitted for Academy Awards consideration in the real world. The feature debut of British-Iranian writer-director Hassan Nazer, a former refugee long resident in

Scotland, this love letter to cinema is a fully Scottish production but was filmed on location in Iran with entirely Farsi dialogue, hence its selection as the UK’s official contender in the Best International Film race. After winning the Audience Award at its festival premiere inEdinburgh, Winners is already a winner. Its gentle feelgood humour, charming young stars and cine-literate narrative should open doors internationally too.

Nazer makes no attempt to conceal his stylistic debt to classic Iranian cinema in Winners. Indeed, he opens with a fond dedication to Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi and Asghar Farhadi. The McGuffin that drives the plot is a shiny Oscar statuette, which has been sent to Iran to honour “our greatest artist,” an unnamed Farhadi-like director who was presumably prevented from attending the Academy Awards by a Trump-style travel ban. After being accidentally left in a Tehran taxi, the statue falls into the hands of a hapless postal worker, who secretly borrows it to show off to his home village, only to mislay it during a bumpy motorcycle ride.

The missing Oscar is then discovered by Yahya (Parsa Maghami), a nine-year-old Afghan boy obsessed with classic cinema, and his classmate Leyla (Malalai Zikria). Full Review

ALPHA FILM FESTIVAL POSTER DESIGN COMPETITION

Calling all community artists and designers, ALPHA FILM FESTIVAL is excited to launch its first ever Community Festival Poster Design Competition. Submissions are now open to design a festival poster for the 2023 edition of AFF. All entries which fulfill the requirements will be displayed within the MILC Platform and voted on in a public poll.

The winner and top runners up will receive $MLT tokens from a total prize pool worth 10,000 USD. The winning design will receive 5,000 USD in $MLT tokens from the pool, with their poster design to be adopted by AFF as its official poster, to be displayed during the festival and used in promotional materials. The theme is simple, “The Future”, in line with the festival’s central film program, so let your creativity run wild! Whether painted, hand drawn, computer/AI-generated, you have full creative freedom. All entries must be submitted by 31st January 2023, either via email aff@milc.global or via Twitter @alphafilmfest. An announcement of when the public voting will commence will be sent shortly afterwards.

Please read the full rules below.

OFFICIAL RULES

Basic Information:

Eligibility: All participants must be registered users of the MILC Community (Register at https://community.milc.global/auth/register)

Entry Limit: Only one poster may be submitted per person

Entry Deadline: Entries must be submitted by 31st January 2023.

More information

IFFR ANNOUNCES 2023 TIGER SELECTIONS

Playland Trailer

IFFR’s flagship Tiger Competition is the festival’s platform for emerging film talent and features a selection of 16 titles for its 52nd edition. The jury will grant three prizes: the Tiger Award, worth €40,000, and two Special Jury Awards, worth €10,000 each. The Tiger Jury consists of Sabrina Baracetti, Lav Diaz, Anisia Uzeyman, Christine Vachon and Alonso Díaz de la Vega.

100 årstider Giovanni Bucchieri, (Sweden)

Gagaland Teng Yuhan (China)

Geology of Separation

Yosr Gasmi, Mauro Mazzocchi (Tunisia, Italy, France)

Indivision

Leïla Kilani (Morocco, France)

Letzter Abend

Lukas Nathrath (Germany)

Mannvirki Gústav Geir Bollason (Iceland, France)

Munnel Visakesa Chandrasekaram (Sri Lanka)

New Strains Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanth (United States)

SUNSHINE STATE

Mannvirki Trailer

Notas sobre un verano Diego Llorente (Spain)

Numb Amir Toodehroosta (Iran)

Nummer achttien Guido van der Werve (Netherlands)

La Palisiada Philip Sotnychenko (Ukraine)

Playland Georden West (United States)

Le spectre de Boko Haram Cyrielle Raingou (Cameroon, France)

IFFR will also offer Sunshine State, an artwork by Steve McQueen commissioned by IFFR and presented in collaboration with Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen from January 26 to February 12 2023

Sunshine State is a two-channel video projection shown on both sides of two screens placed one next to the other. Opening with footage of a burning sun, the work unfolds exploring images from the musical drama The Jazz Singer (1927), known as the first "talkie" in the history of cinema that uses synchronised dialogue.

Three Sparks Trailer

Three Sparks Naomi Uman (Albania, Mexico)

To see the lineups for IFFR’s Big Screen and Ammodo Tiger Shorts, click here.

Numb Trailer

EFP Selects European Shooting Stars

2023

A jury of industry professionals selects the ten most interesting and internationally versatile talents to be introduced to the press, industry and public at the Berlin International Film Festival. As a European Shooting Star, the actors and actresses attend a tailor-made program, including meetings with casting directors, talent agents and producers, which broadens and strengthens their international industry alliances and networks. The activities culminate in a

EFP European Shooting Starshas placed some of the most promising young actors from all over Europe into the limelight over the past 25 years and proven to be an essential stepping stone for launching their international careers.

Kevin Frazier & Nischellle Turner to Co-host 2023 Palm Springs International Film awards

Honorees include Austin Butler (Breakthrough Performance Award, Actor),Cate Blanchett (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actress) (Colin Farrell (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor), Michelle Yeoh (International Star Award) For complete list click here

Palm Springs International Film Festival runs Jan 5 – 23, 2023.

Cannes Semaine de

la

glamorous presentation of the European Shooting Stars Awards at the Berlinale Palast.

The 2023 selections are Mbundu (Belgium), Alina Tomnikov (Finland) Leonie Benesch (Germany), Thorvaldur Kristjansson (Iceland), Benedetta Porcaroli (Italy), Yannick Jozefzoon (The Netherlands), Kristine Kujath Thorp (Norway), Judith State (Romania), Gizem Erdogan (Sweden) and Kayije Kagame (Switzerland).

Entertainment Tonight’s Kevin Frazier and Nischelle Turner will co-host the 2023 Palm Springs International Film Awards on Jan 5,2023, with Media Partner Entertainment Tonight and presented by American Express and sponsored by IHG Resorts.

Critique

Film

2023 Submissions Open

Ava Cahane, Artistic Director Film Submissions for the 62nd Semaine de la Critique are now open through March 10.

Short films selected at La Semaine de la Critique gives directors the opportunity to not only show their films in Cannes, but also to take part in December in the Next Step program. During the weeklong workshop, the filmmakers benefit from professional support in the development of their feature films. For details, click here

Leonie Benesch, EFP Shooting Star, Germany

“Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth,” Michael Haneke once said. This is the surprising dichotomy at the heart of Steven Spielberg’s semiautobiographical The Fabelmans. Presented with the director’s trademark warmth, courtesy of regular collaborators Janusz Kaminski’s brightly lit, comforting cinematography and John Williams’ twinkling score, the aesthetics are illusive as Spielberg presents the truth of his life, refracted through the lens of fiction.

The Fabelmans are the nom de plume for the Spielbergs, with Paul Dano and Michelle Williams in the roles of devoted and supportive parents Burt and Mitzi to the bright-eyed Sammy, as we follow the life of the budding filmmaker from childhood (where Sammy is played by Mateo Zoryan FrancisDeFord) through adolescence (Gabriel Labelle). Just as Steven caught the camera bug after seeing his first movie, The Greatest Show On Earth, so it goes for Sammy, and soon he’s almost never without a camera in his hands. Herding his sisters and friends

THE FABELMANS

VERDICT: Steven Spielberg solidifies his legendary origin story playing with truth, fiction, and the magic of moviemaking.

Kevin Jagernauth, September 12, 2022

I LIKE MOVIES

VERDICT: A caustically funny and sharply perceptive portrait of adolescence and the toxic perils of obsessive cinephilia.

Kevin Jagernauth, September 10, 2022

The curse of suburban adolescence is that it can sometimes feel like you’re killing time waiting for life to begin. In his senior year of high college, the insatiable, motormouth cinephile Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen) is not only ready to escape the

into making westerns and WWII pictures and chronicling family milestones and events, he makes a quick study of amateur special effects and even builds his own homemade dolly tracks. Full Review

tedious sprawl of Burlington, a nondescript suburb of Toronto, but he has a plan: he’s going to apply to the NYU Tisch School of Arts and become a world famous director. His hubris leaves no room for even considering he might not get accepted. Of course, there are respected film schools north of the border, but as Lawrence passionately explains, in a joke that every self-deprecating Canadian creative with big dreams will feel deeply in their bones: “I don’t want to be, like, a Canadian filmmaker.” Debuting in Toronto’s Next Wave section, I Like Movies heralds the arrival of film critic turned filmmaker Chandler Levack with a movie chock full of Canuck specific humor that deserves to make it a hit at home, while carrying all the hallmarks of a future comedy cult classic for everyone else.

When we first meet Lawrence and his best friend Matt Macarchuck (Percy Hynes White) it’s on their weekly Rejects Night, a tradition borne from their shared social outcast status. It’s an evening where they can “be their truest selves” by goofing around, eating piles of snacks, and religiously watching Saturday Night Live. The rest of time, while their classmates are out “having sex, and doing drugs, and getting invited to parties,” Full Review

LAST FILM SHOW

VERDICT: Pan Nalin's latest film, and India’s submission for the Best International Feature Academy Award, is a beautifully mounted and crowd-pleasing ode to celluloid and cinema.

Clarence Tsui, December 7, 2022 Oscars voters have always had a soft spot for movies about movies – and Last Film Show should very much fit their bill as they survey the candidates for the Best International Film Academy Award. India’s submission for the category is a lushly-lensed feature aimed squarely at showcasing the magical allure of film and the mystical allure of tangible, touchable celluloid, packaged within the very accessible narrative of a village kid’s rite of passage from a rebellious urchin to an aspiring filmmaker.

Teasing a thoroughly engaging performance out of his nonprofessional child actor Bhavin Rabari, Indian director Pan Nalin manages to elevate what could have been a saccharine, feel-good narrative into something endearingly magical. Based on his own childhood experiences in the backwaters of the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat, Last Film Show – which bowed at Tribeca before being snapped up by Samuel Goldwyn Films for U.S. distribution – bears witness to the power of cinema as an enthralling agent for personal and social change. Full Review

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the entire Verdict team, I want to express our gratitude for the warm reception given to The Film Verdict by our readers, advertisers, filmmakers and film festivals this year. It has been an extraordinary year that reaffirmed the importance of our communitynot just as an industry, but as an international film community that shares common interests and ultimately a common friendship. After the initial challenges, we now can look forward to a year that is full of good things. We are here to support the international film community with our independent film reviews and many new editorial features, including a few surprises as well.

Each of us at TFV wishes each of you the happiest of holidays and the kindest, most peaceful new year. We look forward to seeing you at the IFFR in Rotterdam and the Berlinale!

Warmest regards,

Eric Mika President and Publisher

AURORA’S SUNRISE

VERDICT: A powerful, accessible blend of animation and archive that bears witness to the Armenian genocide through the eyes of survivor and Hollywood silent star Aurora Mardiganian.

Carmen Gray, November 9, 2022

Screening at IDFA in the Best of Fests section, Armenian director Inna Sahakyan’s Aurora’s Sunrise is intended to guard against the erasure of history. It recreates the remarkable life of Armenian genocide survivor and sometime Hollywood actress Arshaluys Mardigian (later known by her American stage-name of Aurora Mardiganian) through a blend of animation, archival interviews with an elderly but sprightly Aurora (who died in 1994 in Los Angeles), and excerpts of rediscovered black-and-white fragments of the 1919 silent film she starred in, Auction of Souls, which was based on her own experiences in Armenia, and was for some time considered lost. The United States only recognised the Armenian genocide in 2021, joining the 33 other nations to have done so, while Turkey still denies it. This fact, set out in an end-title, lends additional gravity to Aurora’s testimony of atrocities, and the importance of the film as a vehicle to circulate awareness. An ambitious project with glossy, high production values, it is Armenia’s official Oscar entry. The biographical tale is told chronologically and rather conventionally through animation with a naturalistic palate that is intricately drawn but hardly innovative, making this bleak chapter of history as accessible as possible, while not shying away from depicting the reality of the genocide’s more graphic horrors.

Arshaluys is fourteen years old in 1915, as World War I rages. Events are narrated from her point of view (voiced in Armenian by Arpi Petrossian). After her father, a prosperous silk manufacturer, and one of her brothers are taken by Ottoman soldiers from their hometown of Chmshkadzag, Full Review

BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLES

OF TRUTHS

OF A HANFUL

VERDICT: Mexican master Alejandro G. Iñárritu ('Birdman’, ‘The Revenant’) takes time off for a very personal project with autobiographical and cinematic undertones.

Deborah Young, December 5, 2022 (originally published Sept. 1, 2022)

The golden touch of filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, which brought him two consecutive Academy Awards as best director for Birdman and The Revenant, is very much on display in a long film that has the personal feel of lightly fictionalized autobiography. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is the rambling, dreamlike portrait of a famous Mexican journalist and documaker who is about to receive a major award from the gringos in Los Angeles. This event provides the protag with the occasion to ironically reexamine his life, loves, work, family, dreams and mercurial temperament at indulgent length (over three hours with the credits), but in breathtaking shots lit like a metaphysical fairgrounds by cinematographer Darius Khondji. Set for release by Netflix in December, with a limited theatrical run planned in Mexico and the U.S., it is a film whose often dazzling craftsmanship should really be admired on the big screen with a state-of-the-art sound system, where the director’s established fans will get the most joy. It bowed in Venice competition.

If several surreal scenes flash back to the master Bunuel, the concept of a celebrated artist revisiting his past without being able to order his future feels inspired by Fellini and his alter ego Marcello. That is how one reads the main character Silverio Gama (played by Daniel Gimenez Cacho, the egotistical matador in Blancanieves and the narrator of Y tu mamá también) as a gray-bearded stand-in for the filmmaker, Full Review