Issue 3, September 17, 2024 — Cover Two

September 17, 2024

THE VARSITY The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880

Vol. CXLV, No. 3

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The Varsity acknowledges that our office is built on the traditional territory of several First Nations, including the Huron-Wendat, the Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit. Journalists have historically harmed Indigenous communities by overlooking their stories, contributing to stereotypes, and telling their stories without their input. Therefore, we make this acknowledgement as a starting point for our responsibility to tell those stories more accurately, critically, and in accordance with the wishes of Indigenous Peoples.

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The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is special in the way that it brings people together.

From the simple people obsessed with movies, to the high-flying stars that descend upon that red carpet each day, to the journalists that flit around the streets of Toronto in search of great stories. It feels good to be a part of a culture that is bigger than yourself: an enclave that this year gifted us with new magic from the likes of David Cronenberg, Luca Guadagnino, Edward Berger, Sean Baker, Pedro Almodovar, and Halina Reijn.

Sitting in those theatres watching new and old stars shine, I am reminded of Nicole Kidman’s famed 2021 AMC Theatres ad, and the beautiful adage that at the movies we are not just entertained, “but somehow reborn.” Heartbreak

does feel good in a place like this, because that brief pain nudges us towards a better place: a realization, a transformation, maybe even salvation.

What I saw at TIFF this year made me more sensitive to love, more hopeful for the human spirit, and appreciative of the complex struggles out of which many of these films were born.

Thise festival is proof that every year is a great year for film if you look hard enough, because there are always, always people who are trying to make this world a better place however they can.

The world is a better place with films that are good, nasty, and sometimes even morally corrupt. This year, I am grateful for films like Cronenberg’s disquietingly necrophilic fantasy The Shrouds, in which a grieving widower watches the body of his dead wife rot; Reijn’s Babygirl, in which Kidman plays a CEO in a

BDSM-tinged affair with a junior employee; and especially Berger’s Conclave, in which the thesis of the men of the Catholic papacy is wickedly defamed.

This issue is for the storytellers and story seekers, the romantics and the stoics. May these films and these reviews inspire you to go and see more. May the power of good film push you towards that better place where art may turn into alchemy, and grief turn into proof that love was here.

That’s enough said.

Enjoy our TIFF and PopCulture issue.

Car crashes into front gates of Munk School One person sent to hospital with minor injuries after three-car collision on Bloor Street West James Bullanoff Deputy News Editor

On September 14 around 3:00 pm, a car crashed into the front gates of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at 315 Bloor Street West following a three-

vehicle collision on the same street.

In an email to The Varsity, Toronto Police Service Media Relations Officer Shannon Eames wrote that TPS received a call at 3:28 pm reporting the crash.

According to Eames, one person was transported to the hospital with minor injuries.

The Varsity was unable to determine the circumstances of the collision, but by 4:15 pm, two separate vehicles remained damaged on the road in front of the Munk School.

U of T did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment in time for publication.

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Car crashed into gate entrance of Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

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CORRECTIONS In issue 1 of The Varsity, a News article titled “UTSU announces Student Senate elections plans and new platform for clubs’ funding” incorrectly stated that the UTSU Student Senate is the union’s sole governance organ. In fact, the Student Senate is a governance organ solely responsible for advising the union’s Board of Directors about student life.

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In last week’s issue of The Varsity, a Sports article titled “Full out and on top: Varsity Blues Dance Team dominates the 2024 season” misspelled Blues Dance Team’s co-captain Sara Da Silva’s last name as De Silva.

The Varsity is the University of Toronto’s largest student newspaper, publishing since 1880. It is printed by Master Web Inc. . on recycled newsprint stock. Content © 2024 by The Varsity. All rights reserved. Any editorial inquiries and/or letters should be directed to the sections associated with them; emails listed above. The Varsity reserves the right to edit all submissions.

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In issue 1 of The Varsity, a Business article titled “U of T financial statements reveal university expenses outpace revenue growth” incorrectly conflated university endowments with donations and stated that the university’s ability to fund its programs is influenced by investors.

The article has been edited to reflect that the university’s revenue consists of donations and investment income, and that the government, research sponsors, and donors can influence the school’s ability to fund projects. This article has also been edited to reflect that $305 million of the school’s net income was allocated to capital assets, not debt repayments. The following explanation of the university’s debt-burden ratio has thus been removed.

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SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

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To extend or not to extend: U of T unions campaign to change CR/NCR deadline Student unions lobby to make 1.0 credit of program requirements eligible for CR/NCR Olga Fedossenko Assistant News Editor

In August, U of T’s student unions launched a tricampus campaign to change the university’s Credit/No Credit (CR/NCR) policy.

The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU), the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU), the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union, the Arts and Science Students’ Union (ASSU), and the Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students are proposing to extend the CR/NCR deadline until final grades are released and to allow students to apply the policy to at least 1.0 credit of their program requirements.

What is the CR/NCR policy?

CR/NCR allows students across the three campuses to complete a distribution requirement or elective course without affecting their GPA. In a nutshell, a student can set a course’s status to CR/NCR on ACORN before the final exam period, which begins on December 3 for the fall 2024 term. Once the course’s status is changed, the student’s final grade for the course will not appear on their transcript. Meaning, the grade would not impact the final calculations of the student’s GPA. Instead, the transcript will show a ‘credit’ notation if the student received at least 50 per cent as a final grade for the course or a ‘no credit’ if they have not.

Currently, a student may select up to 2.0 credits for CR/NCR. They cannot apply or remove the status after the exam period starts, and CR/NCR can’t be used to satisfy program requirements.

Prior policy changes U of T student unions have lobbied for changes in the CR/NCR policy since the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, the ASSU issued a proposal for the Faculty of Arts & Science (FAS). The union suggested that the university extend the CR/NCR deadline until after term grades are released and allow the policy to be applied to program requirements, not just elective courses. Other unions are now lobbying for the same changes.

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FAS agreed to permanently extend the CR/NCR deadline to no later than the last day of classes since the fall semester of 2021, but declined the union’s proposal to apply the policy to program requirements.

The union’s current campaign In an interview with The Varsity, UTSU’s Vice President (VP) Public & University Affairs Avreet Jagdev said that the unions believe that “students should have access to complete and accurate information about their performance in courses so that they can make informed decisions regarding the CR/NCR option.”

According to Jagdev, the unions have already conducted outreach to students across all three campuses and are continuing to collect responses through a survey they created. The survey asked students questions about how they’ve used the CR/NCR policy and how it has affected their mental health.

UTMSU’s VP University Affairs Sidra Ahsan added that extending the CR/NCR policy has been a persistent request from the student community and that it’s an issue that affects many students’ mental health and academic careers.

“The university has restated their emphasis on promoting mental wellbeing amongst students many times, yet they have left this issue unaddressed over the years,” she said.

The unions plan to use the survey’s results to advocate for an extension of the policy in the future.

In a statement to The Varsity, a U of T spokesperson noted that the university “welcomes student input to improve educational outcomes.”

Students’ response to proposed changes In interviews with The Varsity, many students expressed their support for the unions’ efforts to extend the CR/NCR deadline.

Tiana Manias, a fourth-year forensic chemistry student, said she believes that

“[students] should be able to decide [on whether] to CR/NCR [a course] after reviewing [their] final mark.”

“My fear for this change would be students taking advantage of this and [applying CR/ NCR to] crucial courses [where] they need to understand the topic they are studying,” said Manias.

She continued, “If you get a mark that would increase your final grade you should be able to keep it.”

Yet, some students disagreed with the unions’ proposal to allow using CR/NCR on program requirements.

Fourth-year physics student Logan Blaskie said that this change could also harm students’ applications for graduate school.

“Inside the area of physics, there are several courses that professors at other universities have told me are tantamount to your GPA when being considered as a potential graduate student,” he said. “[The proposed change] could presumably lead to individuals unknowingly [using] CR/NCR [on] some of these important courses… and potentially hurting graduate school applications.”

Fourth-year ethics, society, and law student Valerie Yao opined about the flaws in U of T’s current CR/NCR policy for The Varsity in 2023.

In an email to The Varsity, Yao expressed her support for the student unions’ initiative to make 1.0 credits of program requirements eligible for a CR/NCR notation.

“The university thinks that not allowing [a] CR/NCR on courses that count towards program requirements holds up its academic standards, but this concern is not so relevant,” she said. “U of T’s courses are hard enough already and just because students CR/NCR 1.0 credit for their program cannot show that the student didn’t finish the program satisfactorily.”

Disclosure: Valerie Yao is a Varsity Contributor who has written an opinion article on the CR/NCR policy in Volume 143.

Advocates call on TIFF for more closed-captioning on films A look into the current accessibility issues of modern-day cinema Sharon Chan Varsity Contributor

On September 5, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) returned for its 49th edition. Over 11 consecutive days, local and international films will be screened for film lovers and creators of all ages and backgrounds.

While film lovers and celebrity admirers are excited about one of the world’s largest annual film showcases, the festival has recently faced backlash for failing to accommodate attendees with accessibility needs.

Closed captioning controversy Closed captioning is the display of text to aid deaf, deafened, or people with loss of hearing that includes not only dialogue but also descriptions of sound effects. As mentioned on TIFF’s accessibility page, people can request CaptiView — a personal listening device that can be requested from their Box Office or Front of House staff.

The portable device, with a small screen for viewing the film with closed captioning, features ‘shutters’ to prevent disturbing others watching the film.

Advocates have been urging TIFF to require captions for all films, as many are frustrated with the current system. In an interview with CBC, Michael McNeely, a 28-year-old film critic who experiences both vision and hearing loss, disclosed that the closed captioning devices provided at the festival were not functional.

He suggested that TIFF’s failure to accommo-

date its diverse audience as a leader of film festivals indicates that other film festivals are likely “falling behind.”

On TIFF’s website, the festival emphasizes its commitment to “treating all individuals with respect, dignity and fairness by removing physical, social and economic barriers to participation.”

Following McNeely’s experience, film critics and accessibility advocates are pushing to make captioning a requirement for movies entered into TIFF. Current technology Others have also shared negative experiences with the same closed-captioning technology that failed for McNeely.

In an interview with The Varsity, Catherine Dumé, a political science graduate student and former copresident of the University of Toronto Accessibility Awareness Club highlighted a few major issues with CaptiView: it is clunky and often out of sync with what is being shown on the movie screen. “[It] looks like something that came out in the ’90s and just never became modernized,” said Dumé.

Last year, Dumé also wrote on the case for movie captions in theatres for The Varsity. Dumé wrote that she “would love to see the day when we actually have words on screen by default.”

Closed captioning on the movie screen Kate Maddalena, a UTM professor specializing in technical communication and media studies, also called for greater accessibility as an important step in film.

Maddalena believes that film has always played a critical role in shaping our perspectives of the world.

“Cinema is lots of things… it’s a way to put on someone else’s head for a while and [see] the world in a different way,” said Maddalena in an interview with The Varsity.

When asked about the current push to mandate captioning as a requirement for movies, Maddalena expressed full support for the initiative.

“It’s not a huge ask. Film technology is so advanced — they’ve got CGI that can recreate actors.”

Maddalena also acknowledges that displaying closed captioning on the movie screen could potentially be distracting for viewers. To minimize the distraction, she believes there needs to be a balance between aesthetics and inclusivity.

Film critics and accessibility advocates hope that TIFF can learn from its past mistakes and ultimately become a driving force for an inclusive cinematic experience for everyone.

Disclosure: Catherine Dumé is a Varsity contributor who has written an article on closed captioning in film in Volume 144.

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Kamala Harris and Donald Trump face off in US presidential debate Students, professor speculate on 2024 US elections as Harris gains slight lead

On September 10, US Vice-President (VP) Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump met for the highly-anticipated presidential debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The debate was hosted by ABC News moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis.

The candidates debated several topics, including immigration, climate change, US intervention in Afghanistan, gun control, fracking, and much more. With the presidential election coming up on November 5, The Varsity spoke to some U of T students and faculty about key highlights from the debate.

Inflation and the economy The debate started off with questions about the economy and the cost of living. In response, Harris outlined her plan to mitigate the housing crisis by offering a tax cut of 6,000 USD to families with newborns and assisting small businesses with a 50,000 USD tax deduction.

Trump outlined his plan to impose import tariffs and make other countries “pay [the US] back.”

Jack Cunningham, an international relations professor with the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, explained what effect Trump’s plans would have on Canada in an email to The Varsity: “[Trump’s] proposed 10 per cent [tariff]… on all imports would do serious damage to a Canadian economy still heavily dependent on exporting to the US market.”

Who are the candidates?

Donald Trump is the Republican Party candidate and 45th US president. In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of felony convictions for falsifying business records and was later denied a delay for his sentence.

Two months later, Trump was injured after an assassination attempt during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. At 78 years old, Trump is the only US president in history with no political or military experience before taking office, and the first US president to be impeached

by Congress twice.

Current VP Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate after President Joe Biden stepped down from the race. Harris took office as the VP in 2020, making her the first woman VP in US history.

In 2003, Harris was elected District Attorney of San Francisco and twice served as attorney general of California from 2010 to 2017. Now, at 59 years old, she is the first Black, Indian, and woman presidential nominee.

Abortion Trump defended the overturning of Roe vs.

Wade — the 1973 decision which protected women’s rights to have an abortion under the US Constitution — claiming that Democrats support what Trump describes as “abortion in the ninth month” or “execution after birth.”

Trump also mentioned that 85 per cent of Republicans, including himself, believe that abortion should only exist for cases of rape, incest, and saving the life of a mother.

Moderator Davis fact-checked Trump’s claim on the Democratic Party’s abortion policy, saying, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

The moderators made more corrections later into the debate as well, regarding Trump’s false claims about immigrants in Ohio eating pets and about losing the 2020 presidential election to Biden by a “whisker.”

Harris countered the former president: “In over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal to provide health care…

Eshnika Singh Varsity Contributor

[and some of which] make no exceptions for rape and incest.” She emphasized that the government and Trump should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.

Priya D’Souza McDonough — a fourthyear U of T student studying Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and art history, and registered to vote in New York — expressed their concerns about access to abortion under both governments.

“Although the Democratic party claims to fight for the right of queer Americans to exist and to pursue happiness in this country, they have done precious little to actually protect those rights. The same thing can be said about access to abortion after the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” they wrote in an email to The Varsity.

International crises The two candidates were also asked about their stance on the Russo-Ukrainian war and Israel’s war on Gaza.

Harris stated that she condemns the actions of Hamas on October 7 and believes in Israel’s right to defend itself. However, she also recognized that “innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Harris called for a two-state solution, release of Israeli hostages, and a ceasefire deal.

When asked about Israel’s war on Gaza, Trump stated that the war would have never started if he were president. He extended his statement to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying that he would end the war in Ukraine if he is elected president.

McDonough commented on the two candidate’s views on Israel and Palestine. “What also worries me, of course, is both candidates one-upping each other on how much they ‘love’ Israel, and will continue to send Israel weapons that have been proven to be dropped on civilian areas [and] in ‘safe zones.’”

On September 10, Israel bombed tents sheltering displaced people in al-Mawasi: an Israel-designated 'safe zone' in southern Gaza. As of writing, Al Jazeera estimates that more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks.

Liam Cox — a third-year student from New York studying history and international relations — commented on the state of the elections, writing that, “A Republican federal government is likely to have negative effects on American international prestige and power projection, climate change, safety, maneuverability, equality, etc.”

The final countdown After the debate, the polls have not shifted much. According to ABC News polls, Harris is seen as the debate winner. As of writing, Harris is leading 48.1 per cent to Trump’s 45.4 per cent post-debate, according to Project FiveThirtyEight polling data. Although Harris called for another debate, Trump has stated that he won’t debate her again, claiming that he had won.

While some have shown support for Harris, others have questioned how she defines herself. For Cunningham, Harris has “a less well-defined image in the minds of most voters, and that [image is] largely negative.”

“In the September 10 debate, Harris had to do several things,” wrote Cunningham. “She had to provide voters who didn't think they knew enough about her, and in many cases thought she was too liberal for their tastes, with a sense of who she is and reassure them that she is an acceptable alternative to Trump.”

“Even [Trump’s] most outrageous antics won’t fundamentally change the way most people view him, so the election is likely to remain very close,” wrote Cunningham.

Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debate for the first time.

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Business & Labour

September 17, 2024 varsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca

Hollywood on campus: the finance behind filming at U of T Architecture, tax breaks, and “one of the best shitty jobs” JISHNA SUNKARA / THE VARSITY

Jessie Schwalb Varsity Contributor

Movies and TV shows filmed at U of T range from The Boys (2019) to The Incredible Hulk (2008).

You might have seen film crews around campus, covering up our coat of arms with crests for imaginary schools, while some of your classmates may have also worked on those sets.

U of T holds a particular appeal for studios, not just because it’s located in a film-making hub with tax incentives, but also due to its varied architecture.

Filming on campus generates revenue — both for the university departments that book spaces and coordinate with producers, and for the students who land gigs as background actors. Some of these students told The Varsity that opportunities in Toronto have allowed them to gain experience, make money, and have fun — all in a day’s work.

Who gets paid?

U of T charges studios and production agencies $4,000 per day to film on the St. George campus.

The charge doesn’t include additional costs like food or city-issued filming permits. However, other locations in Toronto may cost film companies more.

For instance, the Ontario government charges $6,700 per day for studios to shoot interior scenes at select public courts and offices in Toronto.

There are no fees for students to use shared spaces during regular building hours to film for class assignments or for extracuriculars, but the school does not facilitate filming requests for student's personal projects.

The event-booking branches on each campus — Campus Events at UTSG, Hospitality & Ancillary Services at UTM, and Retail & Conference Services at UTSC — collect those fees and coordinate with studios. These three branches are ancillary units: they operate semi-independently from the university, submit separate budgets, and aim to turn a profit, which they pay into U of T’s massive operating budget.

UTSC Conference Services’ 2024–2025 budget forecasted that the unit — which also rents out campus spaces for a summer camp and preuniversity orientation — will bring in $2,791,000 in revenue during the fiscal year from June 1, 2024, to April 30, 2025. However, after covering expenses, the unit expects to make $41,000 in net income.

When it presented its budget in February, UTM Hospitality & Ancillary Services projected $798,886 in revenue from facility and space rentals during the

2024–2025 fiscal year.

These amounts represent only a small fraction of the university’s $3.52 billion in total revenue. The revenue from event-related ancillaries is also small compared to other ancillary units. For instance, the university expects residences at UTSC alone to bring in $711,000 in net income for the 2024–2025 fiscal year.

U of T did not respond to The Varsity’s questions about how much money it made from renting out campus spaces for filming.

Toronto on top US-based studios often choose to shoot in Canada because of its favourable exchange rates and substantial benefits for companies that hire local actors and crews. Other Canadian universities also host movie studios — for example, scenes from the romcom movie She’s the Man were filmed at the University of British Columbia, and students at Mount Royal University watched actors from the TV series The Last of Us run past their classroom windows.

But Toronto comes out as a top location for shooting screen media. In 2024, MovieMaker Magazine rated Toronto as the best city to live and work in as a filmmaker. Additionally, the Toronto International Film Festival — one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world — enhances the city’s prominence in the film industry.

The City of Toronto aggressively markets itself to studios, highlighting its “multicultural pool of actors” and skilled crew members on its website. The provincial agency Ontario Creates offers logistical and funding support to studios through targeted programs and by leveraging public and private partnerships. This helps studios secure tax credits that, when combined, can offer up to 45 per cent savings on labour costs and 35.2 per cent savings on overall production costs.

In 2021, the screen media industry in Toronto was valued at $2.5 billion. According to the comprehensive movie database IMDb, more than 17,000 films have been shot in the city. However, Toronto rarely appears as itself in movies, as its aesthetic, yet generic, settings more often stand in for American cities.

A 2021 report commissioned by the City noted that, despite the increased production of foreign movies, domestic movie production declined in Toronto since 2014. “Producers, especially domestic ones, are being crowded out of the Toronto production market,” the report states.

U of Television?

Along with being situated in Toronto, U of T’s ‘Harvard of the North’ reputation attracts studios seeking an Ivy League stand-in. In the cult classic Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Knox College stands in for Princeton University, while U of T buildings including Whitney Hall and the McLennan Physical Laboratories double as MIT and Harvard buildings in Good Will Hunting.

The varied architecture also lends itself to horror — for example, Robarts Library appears as a mega-prison in the action horror movie Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Along with feature-length films, U of T also provides interesting settings for commercials.

Senen Sevilla has worked as a set decorator on ads for brands like McDonalds and Money Mart. He told The Varsity that his role includes “[wearing] many hats” — from buying furniture to setting up and taking down sets.

Sevilla said that filming at U of T excites him.

“A lot of commercials are in a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, a bathroom, all the same thing… So when we shoot at U of T, I know it’s gonna be cool.”

But much like the obstacles faced by our favourite movie characters, filming at U of T doesn’t come without challenges.

U of T enforces strict rules about what studios can and can’t show, and urges productions to maintain the university’s anonymity while filming.

Sevilla said that crews make an effort to leave locations in good shape, partly because they don’t want the university to ban them from shooting here in the future.

U of T tends to limit filming to weekends, reading weeks, or the summer. Sevilla noted that, in Toronto, most filming takes place during the summer and spring anyway since producers often prefer to avoid dealing with harsh weather.

Students for hire Filming in Toronto also creates job opportunities for students looking to appear as extras, also known as background actors. In 2021, Toronto’s film industry employed approximately 35,000 people. However, film crews don’t just pick up students off the street — background actors must be approved, sign releases, and get fitted to ensure their wardrobe matches the setting.

Felicitas Damiano, who recently completed her masters of teaching in dramatic arts and social sciences at U of T, along with her part-

ner Jake Pereira — a fifth-year student studying drama, political science, and Spanish — have frequently worked as background actors. This includes spending eight days at St. Michael’s College shooting scenes for a TV series remake of the 1999 film Cruel Intentions.

Damiano told The Varsity that becoming a background actor had interested her for years, but she didn’t see an opportunity to break into the business growing up in Barrie, Ontario. “When I started at U of T… I was like, okay, now I’m living in Toronto. They actually do a lot of filming here.

This could actually be possible,” she said.

Ulis Bertin, a third-year student studying English and European affairs, worked as a background actor on Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, which Netflix plans to release in 2025.

“They told me not to cut my beard because they were going for a very specific look,” Bertin said. He worked three days in total, putting in 14hour days and earning $16.55 an hour.

“It gives you experience [and] it shows you know the film world,” Bertin said. “More than anything for aspiring actors, it’s a good source of money, because it requires almost zero preparation and yields pretty good, long hours.”

Pereira noted that he earned about $1,000 on the set of Umbrella Academy. However, he explained that, although non-unionized background performers earn minimum wage, unionized performers — with either a drama degree, spoken lines, or who have worked 1,600 hours or 200 days as background actors — receive at least $31.75 per hour, along with travel and overtime bonuses.

Acting in films shot on campus has its perks, with Pereira noting that, “It’s just cool to see the university… become something completely different.”

But that doesn’t mean the work can’t be hard.

Damiano told The Varsity that, despite Cruel Intentions being set in the summer, they filmed scenes in December. “So we were in shorts and T shirts outside in negative two degrees,” he said. “The moment they [said] cut, all the makeup people and wardrobe people would come running with sleeping bags.”

Bertin’s advice to students? Apply as a background actor. “It’s a shitty job, but it’s one of the greatest shitty jobs,” Bertin said. “I made many friends, people who I could never have met studying at U of T.”

Business & Labour

September 17, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca

Beyond the stage lights and red carpets Exploring the labour behind TIFF and film festivals Thomas Law Labour Correspondent

Spanning 11 days and up to 400 films, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) attracts 250,000 attendees and brings some of the biggest names, industry titans, and glamour to the city. Away from the silver screens, behind the scenes, staging the festival is a massive task, and the conditions that the workers operate under have come under scrutiny.

Even after last year’s Hollywood writer and actor strikes for better pay and protection from artificial intelligence, TIFF laid off 12 full-time staff members. The film industry has also gained a reputation for exploitative practices, often characterized by power imbalances and ‘hope labour’ — undercompensated work performed with the expectation of future opportunities.

The Varsity spoke with U of T alumni at this year’s TIFF to understand the realities of working at one of the city’s most prestigious events.

Behind the scenes: A positive outlook Recent UTSC arts management graduate Polen Light has worked at TIFF for

LILY PAEZ/THE VARSITY

the past three years. He currently serves as a logistics coordinator, a role that involves developing festival policies, managing finances, and coordinating communications between departments. He has praised the festival both as a spectacle and as a great place to work.

“While TIFF may not be a perfect workplace, in my expansive arts and culture journey… I have found it to have the best work culture — [the] most meritocratic, most people-focused, and most self-improving,” Light said.

He has found that “TIFF has had the best employer-employee relationship” — one characterized by a welcoming and friendly atmosphere with ample opportunities to learn and develop.

Some of the less-publicized work Light does at the festival includes producing Festival Street at David Pecaut Square: a fourday event featuring open-air film viewings, art exhibits, and fan zones that kick off the festival. Organizing Festival Street involves tasks such as screening the venues, sourcing security, and developing policies and procedures for staff, contractors, and events.

Britt Rolston, a fourth-year arts management student at UTSC, has worked as a scanning representative at TIFF for three years, ensuring that ticket holders are admitted into viewings. She is employed specifically for the two weeks of the festival, usually working 5–6 hour shifts, and is just as enthusiastic about working at TIFF. “I loved it… It’s nice to have this experience,” she said.

TIFF offers vouchers to its workers every year for watching films, gaining early access to ticket selection, and receiving discounts for the CN Tower and Ripley’s Aquarium. However, working at TIFF has its drawbacks.

Rolston explains, “You get the odd person who’s like ‘Do you know who I am’?” While the entertainment industry can sometimes involve

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Elise Corbin Varsity Contributor

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individuals using tenuous connections to belittle workers, this seems to be part and parcel of the field.

For the most part though, she says “people are pretty chill and easygoing.”

As a current student, Rolston finds it challenging to balance her school work with her TIFF responsibilities. “I flat out told my professors, I won’t see you for two weeks, but I will come back with some stories of what celebrities walked past me and waved at me,” she said.

Lean times and cutbacks Front-of-house employees, box office workers, and facilities attendants at the TIFF Bell Lightbox — the permanent cultural centre at the heart of the annual festival — are covered by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local B-173 union agreement. This agreement serves as the bargaining agent for all facilities attendants at the Lightbox. According to Light, almost nobody working at TIFF is under a union, which he said is “not shocking” in the world of film festivals.

These festivals often scale up massively for short, one-time events, which requires a flexible workforce. Due to the nature of these festivals, year-round employees are also frequently dependent on the economic success of previous years.

With the Hollywood strikes affecting 2023’s turnout, TIFF decided to reduce its full-time staff by 12 positions. TIFF’s vice-president of public relations and communications, Judy Lung, claimed in a statement that the after-effects of the pandemic lockdowns and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ strikes necessitated measures to “optimize our yearround and festival operations.”

Despite the challenges, part-time annual workers and U of T alumni find a unique appeal in their TIFF experience. Light noted that some volunteers have been returning for 30 years. “It feels like a summer camp reunion every September for hundreds of us. It’s a very special kind of community and I am so glad to be experiencing it from my position,” he said.

Opinion

September 17, 2024 thevarsity.ca/cateogory/opinion opinion@thevarsity.ca

Trigger warnings are a necessary addition to modern media These warnings in film are meant to empower viewers, not censor creators Leah Cromarty Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article discusses domestic violence, sexual violence, and self-harm.

The debate about whether to put trigger warnings at the beginning of films is nothing new. However, the discussions have lately resurfaced with the promotion of It Ends With Us, a film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling young adult novel of the same name. With themes of domestic violence and emotional abuse at the film’s core, fans were divided over the necessity of warning audiences about these sensitive topics.

One side of the trigger warning discourse claims that trigger warnings could diminish a film’s emotional impact, while the other argues that providing context empowers viewers to make informed decisions about engaging with emotionally difficult material.

Far from stifling creativity or coddling viewers, I believe that trigger warnings enable audiences to confront difficult content on their own terms and allow filmmakers to promote compassion and inclusivity without compromising the creative process. By offering advanced notice, trigger warnings foster an environment of consideration and empathy, allowing audiences to make informed decisions about what they watch.

Purpose and criticisms of trigger warnings Trigger warnings serve a straightforward but important purpose: to inform audiences of potentially distressing content. These warnings typically precede films that engage with sensitive topics like sexual violence, domestic abuse, or self-harm. The warnings help ensure viewers are mentally and emotionally prepared for the content ahead.

Trigger warnings represent a simple act of empathy.

AKIF MUBARRAT BHUIYAN/THEVARSITY

However, some argue that trigger warnings ‘coddle’ individuals by encouraging them to avoid uncomfortable content.

These critics, such as journalist Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, believe trigger warnings promote a society where we would be left unchallenged and avoidant of difficult emotions or ideas that are essential to personal growth. For instance, if one attempts to avoid distressing content related to war, they may be limiting their historical knowledge.

Yet, the individuals who advocate for trigger warnings are usually those who have experienced traumatic events of abuse and violence and, therefore, already have a deep understanding of the material they wish to see warnings for. They will not lose much insight by choosing not to engage in the related content because they already know it first-hand.

Moreover, the argument that trigger warnings lead to avoidant behaviour is unsupported. For example, a 2023 study published by American healthcare academic publication Springer showed that most viewers still choose to engage with possibly triggering material even after being forewarned.

This, to me, demonstrates that trigger warnings do not promote avoidance but simply provide viewers the ability to choose the material they watch.

Additionally, I don’t believe that the filmmaker decides whether to dictate whether viewers must

confront difficult material or not. In fact, I believe the filmmaker has a responsibility to inform individuals about potentially distressing content.

Forced exposure to distressing material can be harmful for survivors of trauma. Exposure to stimuli that remind survivors of their traumatic experiences can be detrimental, as the appropriate healing processes vary from person to person.

Finally, the perception that trigger warnings stifle creativity is similarly misguided. From my experience, informative warnings neither spoil the narrative nor detract from its emotional impact when executed correctly. Netflix’s short lists of distressing themes on the introductory pages of their films and shows are great examples of effective and subtle trigger warnings. Offering information this way does not spoil the story, but keeps audiences informed.

The issues with psychological studies Critics of trigger warnings often cite psychological studies that suggest that trigger warnings have little or even adverse effects on viewers’ stress levels. However, these studies have significant limitations. Some studies, for example, rely on random participant samples rather than focusing on trauma survivors or those with post-traumatic stress disorder: individuals who would benefit the most from trigger warnings.

Furthermore, I think we must question how applicable laboratory experiments are when

Letterboxd has changed the moviewatching experience for the better

translated to classrooms or cinemas. A 2023 study from Current Psychology argued that trigger warnings can worsen anxiety by preparing people to anticipate stress, concluding that trigger warnings have negligible benefits. However, the study tried to prove its theory by using a trigger warning on participants that simply read, “Researchers have been asked to give a trigger warning for the clip” before playing them the visual content.

Without any specificity of the disturbing material, the warning’s vagueness may have reasonably induced the participants’ anxiety because they did not know exactly what the researchers were warning them of. In reality, however, the effectiveness of a trigger warning depends on its tactful, precise, and sensitive execution — which I feel is difficult to fully replicate in a laboratory setting.

The power of choice Whether or not trigger warnings truly reduce anxiety is not what matters the most to me — what matters is that viewers deserve to be informed of.

In the same way that photosensitive warnings protect those with epilepsy, I believe trigger warnings safeguard mental well-being. Many survivors of traumatic events often rely on the warnings to comfortably approach new films. Dismissing or devaluing the importance of these warnings only reinforces the dangerous notion that human mental well-being is secondary to artistic vision.

Trigger warnings represent a simple act of empathy. They are not a burden on creators, but a tool that invites more people into the conversation.

Ultimately, I think trigger warnings uphold both artistic integrity and the audience’s autonomy, enriching the viewing experience for all.

Leah Cromarty is a fourth-year student at University College studying English, philosophy, and history.

KATE CARACCI/THEVARSITY

Logging the love for cinema Atinc Goc Varsity Contributor

Recently, I caught myself doing something interesting when I went to the cinema. As soon as the credits rolled, without even leaving my seat, I instinctively reached for my phone and opened Letterboxd to log the film I just watched.

I wanted to make sure I’ve documented the experience, checked the box, and moved one step closer to ‘beating’ the number of movies I watched last year.

Not too long ago, it would’ve probably been unthinkable to review every film we saw or know exactly how many films we watched each year.

Today, Letterboxd has fundamentally changed the way we engage with movies, transforming the formerly private experience of moviewatching into a collective, social activity.

Letterboxd isn’t just a platform for film logging — it gamifies the entire movie-watching experience. You write reviews and people can like or reply to them. You make a watchlist and people follow it. It’s non-stop dopamine for film lovers.

It’s a community, a game, and in some ways, an integral part of how we consume and critique films today.

Rise of the Letterboxd Developed by Matt Buchanan and Karl von Randow in 2011, Letterboxd aimed to create a fun and engaging tool for film lovers. IMDb is a longstanding comprehensive database for film information while Rotten Tomatoes aggregates critics’ and audience ratings. Letterboxd, however, focuses on social interactive experiences where users can write reviews, follow each other, and

engage in film discussion: much more like social media. Anyone can make an account and start reviewing films on Letterboxd.

In 2024, Letterboxd had over 14 million users, which skyrocketed from 1.8 million in 2020.

Even as its user base expands, Letterboxd’s age demographics have stayed relatively concentrated around young people. According to software analyst platform YouScan’s audience insights, around half of all active users are under 35, with the majority being between 16 and 24 years old.

Social intelligence researcher Ben Ellis argues that the platform’s effective use of other social media helped fuel its popularity. Letterboxd produces YouTube content, such as filmography breakdowns with actors, while posting short videos from film festivals on Instagram and TikTok. Red carpet interviews about celebrities’ top four Letterboxd movie picks have also trended online.

Gamification of movie-watching Many apps today like Duolingo and dating platforms utilize gamification to boost user engagement, adding features such as challenges and rewards to keep users on the platform. While I believe this adds a fun, competitive element to the movie-watching experience, I can also see its negative aspects.

Users may feel pressured to watch or finish movies they don’t enjoy just so they can log them.

Letterboxd turns the movie experience into a competition, compelling users to watch more films and write exaggerated reviews to stand out and gain likes: diluting the fun of genuine film appreciation.

I think the app can also force people to manufacture a false sense of identity. For example, some of my friends worry that others will criticize their favourite movies. Some people may also not log their

guilty pleasure movies because it does not fit their ‘Letterboxd identity.’

In spite of all this, Letterboxd reignited my desire for cinema. Everyday, I log in to see what my friends recently watched, add their recommendations to my impossibly long watch-list, and get the intense desire to watch the most average film that they wrote “WAS THE BEST PIECE OF ART I HAVE EVER WITNESSED IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.” Changing the way we watch movies Letterboxd has built a community of film enthusiasts, making it easier for viewers to access film recommendations and curated lists. I think this helps increase young peoples’ interest in classic films, as less than 24 per cent of the films logged on Letterboxd between January 2023 and April 2024 were current-year releases.

In my experience, I’ve noticed a similar rising interest in classic films among the younger generation. When I attend screenings of classic films at Toronto International Film Festival Cinematheque, a year-round program featuring a curation of classic films, I’ve noticed that the audience is predominantly made up of young people. However, this increased interest in movies is not limited to the classics.

A study conducted by international market research company Kantar examined the movie-going habits of 15–30 year olds in France and found that this age group particularly values the experience of watching films on the big screen as well

as using the cinema to socialize with friends. I see a strong correlation here: as the younger generations’ interest in cinema increases, Letterboxd provides them the tool to share their experiences. This way, film lovers can socialize at theaters but also continue their love for cinema online.

Letterboxd critics You could argue that Letterboxd is undermining traditional film criticism by allowing everyone to review films — but I disagree.

While I enjoy reading Letterboxd reviews for fresh perspectives on films, I still turn to professional critics for deeper analysis. It’s my belief that rather than harming the film criticism industry, Letterboxd is carving out its own niche of light-hearted and humourous film reviews. The most creative and succinct review I’ve read recently was from a friend on Letterboxd, seemingly addressing the director of a film: “Don’t shoot a movie again.”

Letterboxd has quickly become one of my favourite apps. As a film lover, it fills a void the younger generation has long needed: a place to not only log what we watch, but to have conversations, discover new films, and connect with others who share the same passion.

Honestly, I can’t wait to finish writing this article so I can get back to watching a movie and logging it right away.

Atinc Goc is a fourth-year student at UTSC studying psychology and sociology.

Science

September 17, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca

The Stanford AI Index Report: The future in artificial intelligence Perspectives from the 2024 Absolutely Interdisciplinary Conference JI LN LAM/THE VARSITY

Aakash Anil Varsity Contributor

The letters ‘AI,’ are only a measly two syllables, yet become bundled with a bevy of trepidations and an equal amount of hype. It has made diagnosticians and even prophets out of researchers. Helping us separate the artificial from the intelligence was Ray Perrault of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Perrault spoke about the Stanford AI Index Report on the last day of the Absolutely Interdisciplinary conference on May 8. Coming in at just over 500 pages, the Stanford AI Index Report is a behemoth that documents the recent trends in AI. The Stanford Institute’s mission is to produce research that is rigorously vetted, broadly sourced and quantitative.

People talk, but numbers talk louder.

The report was put together in 2023 and published on April 15. Given how fast AI develops, maybe my human eyes prevented me from catching some developments since then.

So, when you’re reading this, if you find yourself thinking that surely the figures must’ve changed, I encourage you to find out. Now that we have our bearings, here are the key insights from the report that Perrault discussed.

AI performance on benchmarks To measure the technical capabilities of an AI model, researchers have come up with clever benchmarks that are essentially pop quizzes for AI. Researchers grade the performance of AI models on these different benchmarks.

While it is true that AI outperforms humans on many benchmarks, it is still lagging on others, like competition-level mathematics or visual common sense reasoning. ‘Visual common sense reasoning’ refers to the ability to

understand the relationships between different objects in an image.

Perrault explained that researchers introduce a benchmark and, after a couple of years, AI models catch up to human performance on that benchmark: their progress reaches saturation. Therefore, researchers are always coming up with new benchmarks and testing new capabilities of AI. So the Sisyphean struggle of AI development carries on.

Previously, AI could only answer prompts in one medium at a time — through text or image. As new benchmarks have shown, AI can process different mediums simultaneously.

The researchers tested this through multiple choice questions in different subjects involving both text and diagrams. The performance of humans on this test was around 80 per cent on average while the best AI models give correct answers around 60 per cent of the time.

The models are ahead in some benchmarks and are slowly catching up in others.

Corporate investment in AI Corporate investment in every industry has been shrinking since 2021, so investment in AI has been naturally shrinking too. However, the percentage investment in generative AI compared to other types of AI has been on the rise. The common public sentiment against AI can be distilled into one pressing question: “Is AI going to steal my job?”

Is AI the bullet in the chamber that kills job security? Perrault weighed in.

A report from consulting firm McKinsey & Company has found that while businesses’ AI adoption shot up from 2017 to 2019, it has remained stable since then. Despite all the attention that ChatGPT and other AI models garnered, behind the smoke and the mirrors, these industries didn’t immediately translate

“ The news is not all bleak though, as the number of open or publicly available AI models are growing.

These models are made to be transparent: you can pry them open, see the inner workings, and tweak them. ” to workflow changes. Of course, the incentive to use AI in the workforce is very much still present. The report reveals that adopting AI in businesses can reduce costs and boost revenue.

But, for now, AI is not going to take your job.

Research and development of AI For those weary of the monopoly in the AI industry, there’s dire news: most large tech companies have monopolies in emerging AI

technology. Google is producing the largest number of AI models, with 40 models since 2019. Most AI models are coming from private companies and not from academic campuses.

The private technology companies developing AI are also low on transparency and developing the frontier models of new AI is getting more expensive — with the largest ones costing well over 100 million USD. The news is not all bleak though, as the number of open or publicly available AI models are growing. These models are made to be transparent: you can pry them open, see the inner workings, and tweak them. Open models allow other developers to learn and build on what already exists. However, the fact remains that closed models like those from private companies often outperform open models.

Governments are starting to heed the warnings that dystopian writers have been spouting for decades. We’re thankfully still far removed from the scorched-earth, post-apocalyptic world of Terminator, but the rapid march of AI development has raised eyebrows. Policymakers have identified a need to regulate AI to allow our infrastructure to catch up to it. In 2023, the US proposed 181 bills which aimed to regulate AI and most of the proposed regulations have been about constraining rather than expanding the use of AI. AI continues to develop at the speed of a jet-plane and we are left watching the contrails behind. The Stanford AI Index Report gives us a peek into the direction we’re headed. With government policies, corporate investment, and human skepticism nudging the future of AI, Perrault’s report demystified some of these forces and prepared us as we wait for the contrails to dissipate into the atmosphere of our society. Hopefully, now we are a little more ready for an impending sonic boom.

Science

September 17, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca

Book review: Foundation by Isaac Asimov Why this visionary novel remains an essential read for fans of science, history, and speculative fiction Razia Saleh UTM Bureau Chief

If you’re a STEM student or simply fascinated by human history’s vast complexities, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation will satisfy your reading needs. Asimov was a Russian-American biochemist turned novelist who became one of science fiction’s ‘greats’. He crafted a narrative that intertwines the scientific principles of his time with the vast history of a possible future where humanity’s destruction looms over future development. Foundation is the first novel of Asimov’s classic science-fiction series, which all began as a collection of short stories published in 1951.

The novel has five chapters: “The Psychohistorian”, “The Encyclopedists”, “The Mayors”,

“The Traders”, and “The Merchant Princes.”

Foundation introduces the reader to the concept of psychohistory, where the world of fictional science merges with the fields of mathematics and sociology, predicting the futures of human populations. According to Asimov, psychohistory is a mathematical method that “deals with the reactions of human conglomerates to fixed social and economic stimuli.” The main character, Hari Seldon, uses psychohistory to predict human behaviour. Seldon has a vision that twelve thousand years into the Galactic Empire Supreme, the world will die. From here began the collection of all human knowledge — the Foundation.

Set on the planet Terminus, “The Mayors” explores the Foundation era, when the brilliant first mayor Salvor Hardin governed Terminus City. The Foundation ousted the Encyclopedists, a political party focused on only academic pursuits, becoming the dominant party in the political arena of the empire. Hardin uses nuclear energy to control the city, sustain its growth, and avoid control from other planets. In the novel, nuclear power is the main technological advancement in the world, symbolizing the weaponry nuclear power exhibits. This leads to warfare and an obsession for power — causing many of the worlds to regress from the technological advancements the empire has placed on the earth.

Since Asimov’s novel was published in 1951,

AKSAAMAI ORMONBEKOVA/THE VARSITY

technology was not as advanced as today’s use of AI technology. Nuclear power was believed to be the power that provides infinite energy.

“The Traders” focuses on Limmar Ponyets, a shrewd trader who is responsible for influencing the sale of Foundation-controlled nuclear technology to other worlds. Ponyets rescues Foundation agent Eskel Gorov, who fails in attempting to introduce nuclear technology to worlds outside of the empire. Due to his actions on the planet Askone, Gorov is imprisoned until Ponyets rescues him and eventually gets the leader of Askone to accept the Foundation’s technology by disguising it as a religious artifact.

“The Merchant Princes,” the first novel’s final chapter, introduces Hober Mallow, another master trader who tries to find if there are technological remnants in the Galactic Empire.

He finds that the Empire’s economy is weakening, but he uses this knowledge to take the power of the Foundation’s trade business to become the first ‘Merchant Prince,’ a key power contributor alongside Seldon and Hardin. Ultimately, the world sees a shift from the scientific control of power to a more political force.

I spent the summer mesmerized by Asimov’s fictional world, which pulled me into an addicting universe mirroring our world’s struggles but with a twist of adventure and ethical dilemmas. It kept me on my toes with characters that I am sure you will eventually be invested in as you start on this seven-book series.

Asimov’s twists are unexpected. One thing that can be boring about science fiction is the constant need to include galactic battles like Star Wars to please the audience, but it does not add any depth to the storyline. Asimov

Scroll, swipe, repeat: How social media is rewiring our attention span The digital age dilemma of why we struggle to stay focused amid distraction Asmi Khanna Varsity Contributor

As students head back to school this fall, their aspirations soar are strong and their dreams grow. Yet, there’s one dreadful distraction we can’t seem to outwit: the buzz, beeps, and dings of notifications tugging at the pocket of our pants. “It’ll just take a few seconds,” we say as we grab our phones. But those seconds often turn into minutes and hours as we jump from app to app, trapped in an endless and alltoo-familiar cycle of struggling to return to work.

Social media platforms, such as TikTok or Instagram, use algorithms that condition our brains to crave quick bursts of content — shortening our attention span and making it easier for us to watch an hour’s worth of reels than to sit through a one-hour lecture. On our phones, when something bores us, we can simply scroll away. In real life, that option doesn’t exist.

The constant stream of algorithm-driven content makes it increasingly challenging for students to stay focused. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that 31 per cent of teenagers in the US lost focus in class due to cell phone use. Additionally, while doing homework, 51 per cent of teenagers watch TV, 50 per cent use social media, 76 per cent listen to music, and 60 per cent send text messages.

How are attention spans changing?

The growing social media addiction is fuelling a worldwide decline in attention spans. In an interview with the American Psychological Association, Gloria Mark, a psychologist and chancellor’s professor of Informatics at the

University of California, Irvine, shared alarming statistics from her study on global attention spans.

Mark noted that the average global attention span in 2004 was 2.5 minutes, which dropped to 75 seconds by 2012, and has since decreased to 47 seconds over the past 5–6 years. However, attention spans are not uniform. According to Mark, they consist of both focused attention and rote activity, which is repeated actions with little required thinking.

In focused attention, individuals are actively and consciously engaged in a task, such as reading a complex article. In contrast, rote activities involve tasks that are less challenging, like playing video games or scrolling through social media, which accounts for most screen time.

A shrinking attention span causes people to switch their focus between tasks more frequently.

Mark hypothesized that attention switching would potentially increase stress levels, as measured by elevated blood pressure, and increase the likelihood of making errors while completing tasks.

Mark’s correlation study revealed that constant attention shifting due to compromised attention spans led participants to make more errors, require more time, and experience greater stress.

Remedying the attention span: Importance of balance, visualization, and our environments While excessive attention switching can be detrimental to mental performance and stress levels, a balanced combination of focused tasks and rote activities can replenish energy, prevent burnout, and enhance attentional capacity.

For example, scheduling breaks after paragraphs while writing long and tedious essays may help ideas flow

better, reduce stress, and maximize efficiency.

Balancing focus and breaks is essential — especially in a technology-driven world where managing distractions is crucial for productivity. By understanding how to use breaks effectively and recognizing triggers for losing focus, we can better integrate technology into our lives while maintaining productivity and well-being.

In an interview with CBS News, Mark recommends exploring the reasons behind our loss of focus. By isolating the causes of distractions, individuals can develop better strategies to improve their attention spans. Additionally, Mark suggests that creating a mental visualization of achieving all daily goals can boost motivation and reduce procrastination.

As Adam Brown, co-director of the Center for Attention, Learning, & Memory at St. Bonaventure University, states, “At a neurological level, I wouldn’t guess there’s this massive thing happening… such that

takes the approach to science fiction with a bigger perspective, answering the big questions of today’s society without the extravagant big battles in space.

The book is not just a work of fiction, but a mirror reflecting the relevance of science in shaping our future. It explores the role of science in shaping future human civilizations, preserving the knowledge we’ve acquired from past to present, and the nature of history’s repeated nature. The Foundation’s technological superiority allows the community and nearby worlds outside the Galactic Empire to become dependent on the Foundation.

Some may say the story resembles Frank Herbert’s Dune, but some believe that Asimov’s work inspired Dune. However, the two stories and their purposes are entirely different. Asimov gives the reader a vision of what scientific insights may do to change an entire civilization’s fate in the long term, especially in a society where data and statistical models play an increasing role in how the world works.

What makes Foundation an exciting read for adventure and novel scientific fiction enthusiasts alike is the love for introspection, challenging us to understand the power and limitations of science. By inviting readers to reflect on the forces that drive societal change, we know the importance of safeguarding humanity’s knowledge.

Whether you’re a STEM or humanities student, Asimov’s classic tale will leave you pondering on humankind’s future and initiating controversial conversations about it. For U of T students looking to expand their horizons into the field of science and speculative fiction, Foundation is an essential complement to your reading list. people have shorter attention spans. It’s the environment we live in. It’s the phones.”

Ultimately, improving your attention span is achievable by ensuring adequate sleep, taking regular breaks, and spending time outdoors.

Sleep is a crucial component of attention, as it directly affects your ability to stay focused.

Quality sleep is best achieved in a quiet, dark, and comfortably cool environment. Avoiding caffeine and late-night naps also promotes brain health.

Reclaiming control over our attention is no longer just about resisting distractions — it’s about reshaping the activities and environments we engage in. The key is not to vilify the tools that distract us, but to use them with intention.

So, the next time a notification tempts you to scroll, remember this: every moment you take to pause and refocus is a victory for your attention.

Your attention, after all, is a valuable resource.

Guard it wisely.

Social media use provokes rapid shifts in attention.

KATHRYN BOURNE/THE VARSITY

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The careless and harmful ways cinema uses physical illnesses and disabilities for entertainment Jessica Han Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.

When I was undergoing treatment for leukemia, I couldn’t bear to watch a single movie. Sitting on my hospital bed, my laptop was always tightly closed and stored away on the other side of the room. Instead, I spent time with my sister in relaxing games of Scrabble.

My reluctance to watch movies wasn’t because movies are a waste of time, nor was I against watching a good film in general — it was because of what the movies were often about and how they affected me. Imagine coming back to your small, empty hospital room after finishing a round of chemotherapy. You’re emotionally and physically drained, only craving a simple distraction. You open Netflix, but all you see is movie after movie that uses cancer as an ingredient to spice up its plot.

Yeah. Not a good feeling.

The characters in these movies either pass away from their condition, fall hopelessly in love to make the character’s condition seem all the more tragic, or do both: fall in love and then die. As someone who has lived through the conditions that these movies so offhandedly abuse, these carelessly reductive movies cannot entertain me.

After successfully beating cancer, I am now a proud survivor. Still, I don’t want to see these kinds of films anytime soon or ever again. When the credits roll, I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth and a single thought swirling in my head: “The main character had cancer, and she lost the battle. What if that was me?”

Approximately one in six people in the world live with a disability, so it’s safe to imagine that many others would be as irked as I am when they see their own experience exploited for cinematic entertainment.

A disparity between representation and reality Torontonians like myself know that the city always gears up for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The 11-day festival includes movies of all genres, produced by companies from all over the world — including the exact movies that I avoided when I was undergoing treatment.

TIFF is not shy about showcasing movies depicting characters with physical illnesses or disabilities: the film Miss You Already, for example, premiered at TIFF in 2015. This dramatic romantic comedy follows the struggles of Jess and Milly, who are childhood friends. While Jess is trying to have a baby, Milly is diagnosed with breast cancer. The diagnosis sends shocks into Milly’s world and she goes through a form of cancer treatment: chemotherapy.

But that’s where things go wrong.

Although Milly experiences a relatable whirlwind of emotions of sadness, frustration, and rage, her way of living and acting as a cancer patient undergoing treatment is overly dramatized to the point where it is difficult to connect with her — even as a former cancer patient myself. Milly becomes as impulsive as a rebellious teenager: she gets drunk day and night and repeatedly cheats on her supportive husband, the father of her children.

Movie characters with cancer like Milly who are depicted as reckless and single-minded perpetuate a disparity between representation and real life, alienating the audience living with a physical illness or disability. Miss You Already uses a cancer diagnosis as a tool to instigate one big adventure for a character rather than to accurately tell the story of a cancer patient. But this isn’t unique to Miss You Already, as many storytellers in the film industry seem to prefer to exploit an experience for dramatic effect and entertainment over valuable representation.

Assistant Professor Chavon Niles at the Department of Physical Therapy in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, who researched critical disability studies, shares a similar sentiment as mine about cultural misrepresentations of disability.

In an email to The Varsity, she explained, “When the media predominantly portrays disability through a negative or limited lens, people with disabilities may feel that their experiences are misunderstood or devalued by society, leading to feelings of isolation and disconnection from social life.”

“This isolation,” continued Niles, “is further compounded by the fact that many fictional stories and visual media fail to represent the structural barriers and discrimination that people with disabilities face daily.” Instead of exploring the complexities of life with a physical illness or disability, Niles argued that many films accentuate

the character’s tragedy by showcasing their bad decisions and fatal endings.

Milly does not experience any character development in Miss You Already, staying entirely onedimensional from beginning to end. She receives her cancer diagnosis early on in the movie, and the rest of the plot simply relies on her diagnosis to shape her as a character. Milly’s story is told from a negative lens because it subjects a cancer patient’s experience to a string of terrible decisions and a tragic ending: death. Miss You Already sends a message that cancer patients are defined by their diagnosis and that all the decisions they make and the actions they take in their lives are an extension of their illness — right up to their untimely death.

Another film that misrepresents life with a physical illness is Blackbird, which premiered at TIFF in 2019. Blackbird is your typical family drama. The mother, Lily, is going through a hard battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal disease that affects the nervous system. She brings three generations of her family together one last time before taking her own life.

In the final family gathering, the audience witnesses an explosion of family secrets that have been simmering for quite a while. From Lily disclosing that she encouraged her husband to enter a romantic relationship with their family friend to Lily’s daughter revealing that she has been suicidal and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, problems surface and arguments erupt with the trigger being the nearing end of Lily’s life.

While tensions and stress levels can arise when a loved one is about to take their last breath, the dramatic family gathering and exaggerated subplots for cinematic entertainment distract from exploring the emotional experience of a character battling with ALS. By the end of the movie, audiences will remain ignorant about the reality of ALS and how it impacts a person, with little attention paid to depicting how Lily felt or how her illness impacted her.

Assistant Professor of cinema studies Rakesh Sengupta elaborated on the disparity between representation and reality in an email interview with The Varsity. He said, “I feel this [disparity between

representation and reality…] can lead to diminished empathy and understanding among audiences. The absence of realistic representation also impacts the visibility and participation of disabled actors and creators in any film industry.”

Poor cinematic representation for entertainment’s sake does more harm than good, especially to young audience members like myself who deal with or have dealt with a physical illness or disability. Blackbird, for example, barely touches on an ALS experience, making it practically invisible under all the extravagant family drama and reducing the illness to the start of a tragic ending.

This shows how representation can ironically endorse invisibility if done improperly.

“We must remember that young audiences are in a critical stage of identity formation and are particularly susceptible to the messages they receive from [the] media,” wrote Sengupta.

After watching Miss You Already and Blackbird, I remember the grand escapades and the dramatic family secrets so much more than the actual diagnoses in the stories. This sends the message that the experience of someone with cancer or ALS is not worth exploration and is rather a way to embellish the story.

Romanticization with consequences When making a movie about people with physical illnesses or disabilities, storytellers take on the responsibility of accurately representing the affected people and their experiences. However, instead of drawing from the richness of real life, they take the easy route of combining a tragic love story with a tear-jerking ending for more viewership.

The result is toxic romanticization.

Me Before You is a popular and perfect example of a book and film that captured the audience’s hearts and brought even hard-hearted people to tears. This movie takes the romanticization of a disability to another level and then ends in blunt pessimism.

The movie follows Will — who became both quadriplegic and pessimistic from an accident two years ago — and his new and quirky caregiver, Lou. The more Will spends time with Lou, the more

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her optimism rubs off on him. They end up falling in love — no shock there — but ultimately, love cannot save Will. He still chooses to die, believing he cannot live a fulfilling life while paralyzed.

Not only does Me Before You portray the life and death of a person struggling to reconcile with his quadriplegia through a romantic lens, but it also sends a dangerously fatalistic message about living with a disability.

Niles also addressed the dismal effect Me Before You can have on young adults: “[The] narrative… where the disabled character’s life is depicted as not worth living… sends a harmful message that can deeply influence how young adults with physical disabilities perceive their own value and potential.”

Despite surviving a motorbike accident and falling deeply in love, Will decides that life with a physical disability is not worth living. I see this compelling audience member with similar disabilities toward hopelessness and thoughts of self-doubt: “Is my life worth living?”

“This internalization can lead [young adults with disabilities] to a lack of self-confidence, social withdrawal, and a reluctance to pursue ambitions or advocate for their rights, perpetuating a cycle of marginalization and disempowerment,” Niles wrote.

Movies for teens also shamelessly use physical illness and disability to amplify the emotional impact of their romantic plots. The teen flick Five Feet Apart follows Stella and Will, who are both diagnosed with cystic fibrosis — a genetic disorder that damages the lungs — and must keep a good distance from each other to avoid spreading harmful bacteria between them. Unsurprisingly, they develop an instant romantic connection and proceed to do exactly what they shouldn’t if they want to survive.

Stella and Will are patients at the same hospital, but despite being under the care of nurses and doctors, they manage to leave and go on rebellious adventures together.

During one of their rebellious adventures, Stella falls through a frozen pond, and Will performs mouth-tomouth CPR, dramatically breaking the distance that their shared

illness requires them to maintain.

By the end of the movie, Stella finally receives her long-awaited lung transplant, but it’s unclear if Will is still alive since he is ineligible for a transplant. He confesses his love to Stella and vanishes forever.

Five Feet Apart uses cystic fibrosis to tug at the same heartstrings that quadriplegia does in Me Before You. The characters are reduced to their physical condition, with romance as the only thing that draws them out of it.

While I am an avid romance lover, using characters with physical illnesses or disabilities in love stories to provoke viewers to feel dispassionate. Stella only shows interest in being more than her illness when her love interest is by her side or after her best friend Poe passes away from cystic fibrosis. This suggests that people with a physical illness or disability need a big emotional event, like falling in love or experiencing loss, to live life to the fullest.

When the credits roll, I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth and a single thought swirling in my head: “The main character had cancer, and she lost the battle — what if that was me?”

Ayala Sher, a second-year history and studio art student at UTSC with a non-visible physical condition, shared concerns about cinematic depictions of physical illnesses and disabilities.

“I really dislike when a disability is reduced to a plot device,” she said. “For example, someone’s mother might experience cancer, and that’s used to teach the character that life is important… that just feels quite disrespectful.”

Sher believes that romanticizing and misrepresenting an illness or disability in a movie can have harmful consequences. “I have quite mixed feelings because less accurate portrayals can be… frustrating at best and offensive and harmful at worst,” said Sher.

“At times, films can reduce the character to their disability, so that character might not have any traits outside of their disability.”

A call for better, more nuanced cinematic representation Movies have social and cultural influence, and when they dramatize and romanticize physical illnesses and disabilities, they can reinforce barriers and discrimination.

As we live in an era of expanding

mass media and increasing film production, it is crucial to nurture better cinematic representation.

Without better representation, more disabled people could be negatively impacted, especially given that the number of Canadians with disabilities increased by 4.7 per cent from 2017 to 2022.

Jheanelle Anderson, a research assistant at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, believes that the feelings of isolation and pessimism experienced by many people with disabilities are due to societal culture.

“I don’t think people with disabilities… isolate themselves from social life purposefully,” she said in an interview with The Varsity.

With both apparent and non-apparent disabilities herself, Anderson knows firsthand how society imposes limitations on people with disabilities. “The environment itself is so inaccessible in multiple ways, whether it’s structures [or] attitudes.”

The cinema is one environment that endorses inaccessibility through flawed representation. As a result, real, living individuals may begin to see themselves in an equally flawed light.

However, some movies do successfully deliver genuine stories, and the TIFF film I Am: Celine Dion (2024) is one of them.

I Am: Celine Dion takes the audience on an epic journey through the “My Heart Will Go On” singer’s life and her experience with stiff-person syndrome: a rare neurological disease that causes stiffness and spasms. It highlights both the ups and downs of an individual battling an illness while juggling family life and a career as a singer. By opening up about her personal struggles and courageously including footage of herself experiencing an unexpected seizure while filming, Dion offers a raw, behind-the-scenes look at life with stiff-person syndrome.

This movie excels in representation not merely because it is autobiographical, but because it offers unfiltered portrayals of joy, sadness, and anger. While the film showcases the happiness Dion’s family and career bring her, it also confronts audiences with the numerous ways a physical illness can affect a person’s personal and professional life.

Real, rich, and complex cinematic representations portray the good and bad aspects of living with a physical illness or disability and place a sincere focus on that character. Rather than existing solely for dramatic effect, the character reveals

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the diverse challenges faced when an illness or disability alters one’s life: confronting the intense desire to pursue passions without limitations or discrimination, as well as the ability to enjoy life — just like anyone else.

People with disabilities often experience higher levels of mental distress compared to those without disabilities. In fact, 17.4 million disabled adults have been reported to have recurrent mental distress, according to a 2018 study conducted by US health agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Government. The films currently playing in cinemas may not be alleviating this issue.

We need to call for a more nuanced and accurate cinematic representation of disabilities and illnesses. We need to see that we are valued and worth living. We need acceptance and empowerment. Our lives are rich and our struggles complex. We are real people with emotions, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Stigmatization and romanticization in movies impact us deeply, and no one should be okay with it.

Anderson puts it this way: “It’s really a journey of acceptance and a journey of unlearning messages that you’ve been told. Representation is important, and the kind of representation that disabilities get, is just as important.”

Arts & Culture

September 17, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/arts-culture arts@thevarsity.ca

TIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFF Review: Nightbitch Not the ‘female rage’ movie you were hoping for Milena Pappalardo Short Form Video Editor

‘Female rage’ movies are having their moment.

Older films such as Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981), featuring Isabelle Adjani’s iconic bloodcurdling meltdown in a subway tunnel, have become a favourite among social media girl bloggers. The X trilogy, starring Mia Goth, offers another example of an unchained woman protagonist, with her murderous rampages tinged with feminist ecstasy.

When first presented with the plot of Nightbitch — a stay-at-home mom’s repressed anger slowly turns her into a wild dog — I had high expectations. Would this be another standout in the growing canon of female rage movies?

Unfortunately, while director Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch seemingly tries to be a sort of plucky dark comedy, the film plays it far too safe to be dark or genuinely funny.

Amy Adams’ performance as the unnamed protagonist, Mother, is generally strong with a comedic edge, but eventually sabotaged by Nightbitch’s contrived screenplay. Each time Mother breaks into a rage at her overly-chill husband (Scoot McNairy), her dialogue is packed with the same feminist witticisms and jargon you might hear in a Michelle Obama speech. It felt as though Heller were trying to wink-wink nudgenudge the audience: “Hey you guys, I know this stuff!” Several times throughout the film, I thought to myself: “Didn’t I read that line on Twitter?” As a result, Mother’s exasperation with her daily routine comes off with about the same authenticity as a busy mom in a Subaru advertisement. Too busy superficially signalling its ‘feminist’ ethos, Nightbitch fails to disturb, unsettle, or inspire.

As a dark comedy, Nightbitch fails to convincingly subvert its idyllic suburban setting where it takes place. The walls of Mother’s house — where she supposedly feels confined like a caged animal — never creak with darkness.

The contrast between ‘good mommy’ and ‘bad mommy,’ ‘night mommy’ and ‘day mommy,’ never reaches a truly jarring climax.

Nightbitch particularly lacked the body horror element one would expect from a film about a woman morphing into a dog. The story didn’t linger on the toll of this transformation on her body, nor witness her wreak havoc in a half-woman, half-animal feral element. Its handful of gruesome shots felt out of place. Rather, Nightbitch takes its central metaphor all too literally: Mother turns into a CGI-rendered German Shepherd. If watching a dog gallop down a tree-lined street was supposed to symbolize Mother’s fearsome final form of unbridled rage, it was laughable.

Heller’s rich opportunity for gore and suspense was defanged and replaced with something far more domesticated.

In fact, Mother’s canine transformation is handled so clumsily that my jaw dropped several times in the theatre. It begins when she checks out a book about women deities from the library, which introduces us to powerful half-animal, halfhuman goddesses from Inca or Hindu mythology.

As Mother unlocks her ‘primal’ side, she starts playing ‘doggies’ with her son — buying him a dog bed because he sleeps better on the floor, and deciding that they eat with their hands as dogs do. We watch her make growling noises while shovelling mashed potatoes into her mouth — a scene meant to show Mother unleashing her inner mama bear.

Review: Viet and Nam An exploration of love and loss through the lives of Vietnamese coal miners Druphadi Sen Varsity Contributor

The ghost of war casts a melancholic shadow over the present-day tragedies of two coal miners in Viet and Nam. The titular characters, Viet and Nam, though not identified as such during the course of the film, attempt to find breaths of fresh air through one another amidst the coal dust they’re customarily surrounded by.

Viet and Nam’s illicit romance is quiet and completely entrancing in its direction. Director Trương Minh Quý’s 16mm lens invites viewers to immerse themselves in the intimate yet desolate world of the miners, played by Phạm

Thanh Hải and Đào Duy Bảo Định. The camera lingers on their faces and hands, capturing the subtle exchanges that relay their affection and yearning for a better life. Nam intends to leave Vietnam through a dangerous route in a shipping container and a river crossing wrapped in plastic, in spite of accounts of martyrized escape attempts. Despite Viet’s deep concern and desire for him to stay, he must grapple with the painful acceptance of Nam’s inevitable departure.

The strongest storyline in the film is its depiction of Nam’s mother, Hoa (Thi Nga Nguyen), and her search for her long-dead military husband’s burial spot. She attempts to find reconciliation by journeying to remote battlefields near the

Too busy superficially signalling its ‘feminist’ ethos, Nightbitch fails to disturb, unsettle, or inspire.

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Not only did these scenes muddle the film’s driving message, but they also came off as painfully cringe-worthy. Many cultures traditionally eat with their hands and sleep on the floor, yet we watch Mother ‘discover’ these practices in a way that feels dismissive. “Maybe we’re all just animals,” she earnestly muses, as the movie closes with her family living in a pillow fort — an upper-middle class American parody of primal living. The entirety of Nightbitch reeks of wellmeaning white naïveté: by trying to simultaneously turn Mother’s descent into a feral creature into an Eat Pray Love moment, the film achieves neither.

One almost feels pity for Mother, clumsily trying to grasp a communal, intuitive ethos of motherhood that many mothers outside global Western civilization already understand. Yet, the film fails to touch upon the root of her struggles — the isolating nature of suburbia. Instead, Mother finally fulfills her dreams by divorcing her husband, who moves into a new condo with their child. Only then

when she is left alone can she create the art she had bottled up during her motherhood, hoping to prove her worth to him.

Beyond the fact that Nightbitch will resonate as cathartic or relatable primarily to a privileged demographic of women — two homes on one income, really? — the film’s protagonists only grasp their lesson superficially. Overall, Nightbitch follows a dated Western second-wave feminist narrative: women were trapped as housewives until they got jobs, left their husbands, and found self-actualization.

Nightbitch never fully leans into its eerie premise, offering about as much feminist nuance as a tampon commercial. If you’re a Gen X mother who considers Kamala Harris and Taylor Swift to be #girlboss icons and whose home looks like a Pottery Barn ad, you might enjoy this movie. But for those seeking a film that delves into the complexities of motherhood with the real depth and all its gruesomeness, I suggest looking elsewhere.

Vietnam-Cambodia border along with another Vietnam war veteran — or the American war, in Vietnamese — whose memories, Hoa hopes, will resurface in time to find her husband’s remains.

Hoa’s life as a coal seller — as well as Viet’s and Nam’s work in the mines — emphasizes the role of the Earth in the narrative, highlighting the deep connection between personal histories and the land. Hoa’s quest for her husband’s burial site intertwines with the miners’ daily labour, illustrating how their lives and losses are rooted in the same soil that bears the weight of their struggles. Quý studies the cyclical nature of life, how dirt and the dead transform into coal, the source of sustenance for Nam’s family, as his and Viet’s relationship ultimately echoes the same impending and unjust severance of his parents.

The earth itself seems to be the only witness to their past and present.

In sharing the realities of the widows and families of military personnel, Viet and Nam presents a unique perspective. Hoa, determined to find

closure, journeys off into the borderlands of her home. Other wives are shown to pay so-called clairvoyants in pink robes and white facepaint to find their own husband’s resting spot. The episodic nature of the film presents the fragmented realities of the grief ridden characters.

Cinematographer Son Doan captures Vietnam’s greenery and the stark contrast of its harsh landscapes with a striking visual clarity.

His lens immerses viewers in the lush, vibrant beauty of the countryside, while exposing the rugged, unforgiving terrain where the characters’ lives unfold. Perhaps the most striking scenes of the film are with Viet and Nam tenderly holding one another in their secluded alcove within the mines. The coal surrounding them glistens like stars. Doan and Quýcreate a dichotomy between the serene, natural world and the gritty, labourintensive reality of the coal mines in breathtaking scenes.

Viet and Nam’s most unexplored aspect is perhaps the relationship of the titular Viet and Nam. While laden with physical and intimate moments between the two, their sparse ennui-filled glances leave viewers wanting more. The film evocatively portrays the characters’ intimate moments, but their relationship often feels elusive, with the narrative focusing more on the external struggles and less on the emotional depths of their bond.

Viet and Nam excels in evocative visuals and poignant depictions of both personal and historical struggles, blending pasts and futures, the worldly, and the metaphysical. The film captures how the characters’ physicality — through their labour, touch, and presence — becomes a crucial aspect of their emotional and existential journeys. Although the sleepy, winding effect of the story is perhaps purposeful, it does demand a great deal from even its most resilient viewers. It’s difficult to let oneself go in the relentlessly haunting world of Viet and Nam. However, those that let themselves become absorbed in the meandering, sensuous storytelling will find themselves rewarded.

Two gay Vietnamese lovers struggle against a tortured past and a bleak future.

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Review: A Sisters’ Tale Leila Amini spotlights her sister’s journey to fulfill her dreams in an earnest documentary Audrey Lai Varsity Contributor

A Sisters’ Tale opens with a striking shot of Iranian singer Nasreen Amini bathed in red light from a lamp on her nightstand. Her back is turned to us, and the glow of her phone illuminates her face.

Her haunting song reverberates through the darkened bedroom.

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, women have been forbidden from singing in public, silencing the voices of aspiring artists who are women like Nasreen, director Leila Amini’s sister.

Despite these restrictions, Nasreen decides to pursue her dream, navigating the complex repercussions of defying both legal and social norms imposed by a patriarchal government and society.

The documentary is filmed mostly in private settings: within the walls of Nasreen’s home, inside her car, or on the streets of Tehran in the dead of night. Through Leila’s close proximity to Nasreen, the audience is drawn into Nasreen’s personal journey — a quest for a life beyond marriage and motherhood. This close perspective allows viewers to fully immerse themselves into the guarded enclosure of Nasreen’s private life.

Over the seven years of filming A Sisters’ Tale, Nasreen’s dream to become a singer evolves from a distant hope into a tangible reality. In a loveless marriage with a traditional husband who ridicules her ambitions behind her back and is

often absent at home, Nasreen comes to realize that pursuing her dream is essential after the birth of her daughter.

“What about my passion for singing?” Nasreen asks Leila. “And having my own concerts? Just two kids… Is this what I should teach to my kids? ‘Forget about your dreams?’ ‘Forget about yourself?’”

Leila captures Nasreen’s voice during her singing lessons and when she performs a song in an underground recording studio, but it is in Nasreen’s own home that the film feels most raw. She borrows money from her son, Hamid, for music lessons her husband refuses to fund and sings songs about true love and freedom while her daughter cries in the other room. The buildup of tension within Nasreen’s family is palpable, and she is acutely aware of the sacrifices required in diverging from the life that has been.

Her family voices concern about her financial stability should she divorce her husband and the safety of pursuing a profession that is illegal for women.

We are constantly reminded of the camera’s presence. The screen shakes as Nasreen embraces Leila after securing a music producer.

Leila voices her fear that the police driving next to Nasreen might notice her lack of head covering. At one point, Nasreen pleads with Leila to stop recording when she begins to cry while discussing her marital issues.

A Sisters’ Tale is not only a story about

Review: Queer Guadagnino is a stranger in his own nervous system Patrick Ignasiak Arts & Culture Film Columnist

Queer is an early and relatively minor novella written by William S. Burroughs in the ’50s which remained unpublished until 1985. In adapting Queer into a script, director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who previously collaborated on Challengers, intended to finish the narrative with respect to “how Burroughs would have finished it.”

I find this a little disingenuous. The screenplay is a largely sterilized treatment of the original material, muddled with a few biographical details pinched from Burroughs’ The Yage Letters.

Daniel Craig plays Lee, a wealthy American expat in Mexico City whose only business expenses seem to be booze, cigarettes, and

prostitutes. The politeness of Craig’s expressions swims with a sub-surface, self-destructive libido which the film allows to seethe at its finest moments.

The main character is something of a Burroughs impression — Lee is an authorinsert after all — which Craig plays with pathetic mannerisms usually obscured in Burroughs’ patterns of self-presentation: quicker to embellish a lecherous hunger for boys than any degree of tenderness. Craig’s performance is very effective and so is his co-star’s, as Allerton (Drew Starkey) carries a plain ease of seductive gesture without ever allowing himself to fully decompress in a situation. He’s pulling himself along with an ambiguous and sleek double-bind, which is appropriately frustrating.

Queer is constantly pressured by these

Nasreen, but also about Leila. Nasreen’s journey to become a singer and Leila’s pursuit to become a director are deeply intertwined.

The film itself, which depicts Nasreen breaking Iranian laws, embodies the risks both women take in pursuit of their dreams. Their sacrifice highlights the immense courage of Nasreen’s story, confronting misogynistic legislation and restrictive social norms.

The film closes with a poignant shot of Nasreen on a hill, gazing out at the city before her.

Though her back is turned, the daytime setting symbolizes the future and the possibilities that have opened up for her through her courageous step toward her dream. A Sisters’ Tale is not only a labour of love from one sister to another, but also a profound tribute from these two sisters to all the women of Iran.

The film tackles the complex norms imposed by patriarchal government and society.

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biographical details. For example, the motif of the centipede repeats in various minor circumstances, which I believe is Guadagnino referencing Burroughs’ outsized interest in the myriapod as a thousand-legged representation of social control.

In this adaptation of Queer, this symbolism is quite confusing, with the centipede positioned arbitrarily within ‘trippy’ sequences of shots. These are somewhat reminiscent of the dream-like stage realities of playwrights like Jean Cocteau or George Powell, but I found that Guadagnino’s overreliance on misdirection disrupts the discontinuous relationship between the scenes to the point of monotony. It wasn’t that these biographic detail additions were necessarily predictable, but that they were stagnant and couldn’t really dynamize or compel interesting cinematic recognitions in the same sense that Burroughs’ prose excites on the level of language.

Guadagnino’s blocking — the details of actors’ place and movements within the camera frame — weighs out striking character dynamics. As a form of visual storytelling specific to character positions within a shot, it is conventionally

Daniel Craig plays an American expat beholden to booze, cigarettes, and prostitutes.

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skilful. However, he struggles to reorient those sensibilities when the script necessitates a shift in the logic of these compositions.

His depictions of substance usage recycle a small selection of relationships: namely Lee’s protoplasmic and otherworldly impulse to assimilate into Allerton, which Guadagnino represents with the double-exposure of phantom fingers mid-molestation. It’s clear that this use of cinematic language is communicating a cosmically grand pining, which is why I’m a little suspicious of Guadagnino’s interpretation of the text. He cut extremely little in the translation from novella to screenplay but notably omitted the section where Lee considers soliciting sex from thirteenyear-olds by dangling a few Sucres — a currency used in Ecuador prior to 2000 — for them. In interviews, Guadagnino claims the movie’s thematic concern is “the ultimate love story.”

Since Queer was shot in an Italian studio, much of the set design is digitally-generated.

The clay roofs and hilltops all slant together with this gloss of wrongness that translates visually as sludge. At points, the unreadability of any landscape is quite Burroughs-esque, but Guadagnino’s romantic presumptions assure the results never quite derange the senses enough to be interesting.

The exception to this is the occasional shot layered with the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score, which is a kinetic, synth-charged network of orgasms. There are a few indulgent and anachronistic needle-drops, like Nirvana’s Come as You Are — presumably a wink at the collaborative spoken-word tracks released by Burroughs and Kurt Cobain. The tonal structures are hideous and combust with a strange energy of living tissue that the film’s other stylistic commitments can’t match in velocity. Even the sex, which, although explicit and shot with obvious artifice, proves too straightforwardly appetizing to suggest anything erotic.

In much of Burroughs’ work, substances and languages are transmitters of disease imported from an extraterrestrial zone of future-time.

While watching Queer, I was similarly affected.

Guadagnino’s depiction of the early author has a certain larval hum and the sum of Burroughs’ biography is actively converging with the film's fiction. Burroughs is turbulence in the repetitive perfection of the scene, he’s already here, and he’s already written novels more compelling than Guadagnino’s adaptation of Queer.

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Review: Conclave No man is worthy, therefore every man is worthy of the papal throne Divine Angubua Arts & Culture Editor

Conclave — a subtle and sly political thriller directed by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger — explores a what-if scenario where the rigid, traditional Catholic Church faces off with the inevitable force of worldaltering change. This film imagines the potential impact on religious conventions when they are confronted with the necessity to adapt in order to survive.

With the pope’s death, the Holy See — the Roman Catholic Church’s government — must elect a new pontiff, and here begins this surprising tale.

We begin with Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the deceased pope’s trusty right-hand man tasked with leading the papal conclave — a meeting of cardinals from around the world — through the election process. As the candidates float gracefully under Lawrence’s keen gaze between the sacred Sistine Chapel — where the voting takes place — and their chambers inside the hermetically sealed Casa Santa Marta, we are introduced to a cast of intriguing characters, featuring Stanley Tucci, Sergio Castellitto, and John Lithgow. Although summoned for a sacred task, these holy men all harbour their own fleshy ambitions, scandalous secrets, and dark human indecencies.

Lawrence is a man tortured by his conscience, undergoing a crisis of faith — a struggle rendered with brevity and nuance through Fiennes’ quiet graceful performance. From this perspective, Berger effectively highlights the transient nature of belief, political power, and prestige in a society founded upon the edict and appearance of holiness.

This transience is poignantly illustrated through the tragedy of Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a Black cardinal from Nigeria who is leading the race for the papal throne when a grave secret from his past is revealed; a sexual sin is brought to light. The revelation shatters Adeyemi’s prospects and breaks his heart, while Cardinal Lawrence provides solace despite being the one who exposes him.

Everything revolves around the race for personal power, which is built upon holiness and one’s resemblance to God. Thus, the ideal pope must be as unknowable as God — silent, omniscient, and mysterious.

We observe that men can appear good and worthy so long as their past remains hidden or forgotten. Through Lawrence, Berger reveals the Catholic Church’s human face and ego, suggesting that its sensibilities are not divine, but the imposed will of some guy in a robe. The film suggests that the Catholic Church deserves ‘a pope who sins and asks for forgiveness’ — a pope who doubts — provided that his sin, doubt, and contrition remain concealed.

Among the silenced voices are women, the Sisters, who play a crucial role in breaking the silence in this film. Women come forward to bear witness and reveal truths that tarnish men’s reputations, denying them access to the seat of power. Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) is pivotal in this regard. In honour of the deceased pope, she exposes a dubious conspiracy at the heart of the conclave, triggering chaos. Sister Agnes then retreats back into the shadows, satisfied.

As she states, “God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears.”

Throughout this experience, Berger plays with physical space, flooding our minds with images of the Vatican’s vast rooms, tall arches,

Everything is about power, which rests on holiness, and one’s likeness to God. COURTESY OF TIFF

and men reduced to the size of an ant inside this mighty monument of faith. We glimpse the art inside the Sistine Chapel, where high ceilings are adorned with nude beings posed in struggle or homo-erotic tension. Sculptures of naked torsos are placed beside men engulfed in robes. The Sisters too, behave like sculptures — unmoving and unseeing inside this silent bubble.

There is a clear sense that these men are trying to transcend the physical world in all they do, coupled with the knowledge that transcendence, in this case, comes out of either total suppression or open embracing. Within the film’s context, we are placed at the heart of the papal struggle for the papacy, exploring the competing ideologies of conservatism and liberal Catholic pedagogy: a return to the dark ages versus the welcoming of LGBTQ+ people into the church, and under-

standing that, in many ways, the church is the sum of men who inhabit it.

By the end of the film, we come to understand that no man is truly worthy, and therefore every man may aspire to the throne — every ‘other’ person is worthy. Berger plays a mean trick here, delivering in the final fifteen minutes a twist so radically sacrilegious that I audibly gasped.

Regardless, the tortured strings that ushered us into a stormy beginning have transformed into grand, billowy organ music. We have a new pontiff, and he is good.

We finish with Cardinal Lawrence looking out a window at some women in white, smiling with newfound hope for the church. The film suggests that sometimes, for the centre to hold, it must first be broken. It seems we are nearing a glorious, strange new age of innocence after all.

Review: Emilia Pérez Jacques Audiard’s bold musical blends crime, redemption, and gender affirmation as women reclaim power Chhata Gupta Varsity Contributor

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez is a genre-bending film that weaves together elements from popoperas, crime-thrillers, and gives a gender transition story to deliver a daring cinematic experience.

Audiard — a celebrated French filmmaker known for A Prophet (2009) and Rust and Bone (2012) — takes his first stab at the musical format with Emilia Pérez, exploring themes of identity, transformation, and redemption. Starring Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Selena Gomez, this maximalist musical offers a visually striking and emotionally charged narrative.

Set in Mexico City, Emilia Pérez follows the journey of notorious drug kingpin Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), who transitions into the titular character, Emilia, leaving behind a violent life in pursuit of peace and self-discovery.

Sharp defence attorney Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña) helps Emilia through her transition, orchestrating everything from her gender-affirming surgery to the staging of Del Monte’s “death.”

However, as Emilia tries to build a new life, her haunted past threatens to resurface, endangering the transformation she’s worked so hard to achieve.

Women at the forefront One of the film’s most compelling aspects is how it places women front and centre, fighting for control in a harsh world dominated by men. Rather than deconstructing the typical tropes of a gangster film, Audiard enhances them with vibrant music and elegant choreography.

These women aren’t just surviving — they’re actively reshaping the world around them, taking control of spaces previously ruled by violent masculinity.

Visually, this empowerment is striking. Emilia and Rita’s physical presence dictates the motion and energy in every scene. Their movements set the tone for everyone around them. In public confrontations, their combined influence on the space around them is tangible — they hold power not only through words but also through choreographed movement that subtly reinforces their control over the space. In a genre so often dominated by aggressive masculine energy, Emilia Pérez reclaims the stage for women, allowing them to express their emotions and strength through both music and action.

Music as a narrative tool The film’s musical elements, while not always show-stopping, blend effortlessly with the dialogue and action. Rather than focusing on grand, applause-baiting numbers, the music serves as a narrative tool, propelling the story forward and enhancing emotional beats without overshadowing the plot. While not all of the songs leave a lasting impression, the ones that do resonate deeply.

Saldaña shines in a memorable gala sequence, where she dances through a room of corrupt figures, exposing their misdeeds with bold choreography and biting lyrics. Gomez, playing Emilia’s estranged wife Jessi, combines her musical talents with emotional acting, shining particularly well in moments where she conveys Jessi’s anguish. Yet it’s Gascón who anchors the film, her quiet ballads

Emilia Pérez shows women taking control of spaces previously ruled by violent masculinity.

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reflecting Emilia’s inner struggle as she balances her violent past with the woman she is becoming.

Gascón’s restrained performance captures Emilia’s internal struggle as she grapples with her past and her future. Her understated, yet powerful, performance is one of the film’s strongest elements.

The narrative’s highs and lows As captivating as Emilia Pérez is, the narrative isn’t without its flaws. The middle of the film loses some of its momentum, and the pacing slows down noticeably. Similarly, while the ending is powerful, it leaves you with mixed emotions. The rapid shift from an emotional conflict to a violent climax feels rushed, and some storylines — such as Emilia’s attempt to atone for her violent past by helping victims of violence — feel underdeveloped.

One of the film’s notable shortcomings is the lack of consequences for Emilia’s past crimes. While the film focuses on her personal redemption, the ease with which she is forgiven for decades of violence feels a little too convenient. It’s a contrast to the emotional weight of her internal struggles and while

the film’s ambition is clear, it occasionally fumbles in delivering on its grand themes.

Cultural relevance and final thoughts Emilia Pérez is more than just a daring experiment in genre — it’s also a commentary on transformation and survival. In a time where conversations around gender identity are becoming more prominent, the film’s focus on a transgender protagonist trying to navigate life beyond her past is culturally relevant.

Audiard’s decision to cast Gascón, a transgender actress, in such a pivotal role brings a sense of authenticity and resonance to the film’s themes.

Despite its pacing issues and underdeveloped subplots, Emilia Pérez is an innovative film that isn’t afraid to blend genres and explore uncharted territory. The performances — particularly those of Gascón, Saldaña, and Gomez — infuse the film with heart, humour, and intensity which elevate the story beyond its occasional missteps.

Audiard’s vision is ambitious, and even when the film stumbles, its creative risks make it a memorable experience worth watching.

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Review: Babygirl Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson shine in new erotic-thriller Isabella Reny Deputy Senior Copy Editor

Content Warning: This article contains descriptions of sexually explicit content.

Babygirl, directed by Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman, fixates on one question: who holds power in sexual dynamics?

Kidman plays Romy, a bossbabe CEO of an Amazon-esque company. She engages in an extramarital affair with one of her interns, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), while juggling her commitments to her family and husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas).

The dynamics between these three actors are absolutely electric.

Kidman portrays Romy’s insecurities and sexuality with a rawness that meshes well with Dickinson’s portrayal of Samuel, whose insecure dominance is palpable. Samuel may be one of the most obnoxious characters ever put to screen. Every time he spoke, all I could think was, ‘men really do have the audacity’ — yet he also displays moments of vulnerability.

His voice quivers when giving Romy commands and though he craves the dominant role in both sexual and social situations, he stumbles through it awkwardly, revealing his naivety. Samuel’s unlikability is crucial, especially when compared to his competitor, Jacob.

Jacob exudes a kind demeanor. Warm and caring toward his family and comfortable in his creative role — an intriguing contrast to

Romy’s dominance in the corporate world.

Babygirl is an erotic-thriller, drawing inspiration from '90s films like Basic Instinct.

In a post-film Q&A, Reijin acknowledged that many erotic-thriller films are framed through a ‘male gaze.’ She explained, “I wanted to make my own sort of answer to that, and make a movie about sex and female desire… and talk about everything I’m very ashamed of.”

An important aspect of Babygirl is its use of gender dynamics. Despite women’s increased presence in the workforce, figures like Romy — who is a CEO — remain rare, with barely 10 per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs being women.

Even though Romy holds power over the other characters, she struggles to fulfill her personal desires and is constrained by their expectations.

She confines herself and her sensuality due to societal shame. Reijin reflects on how women are still constrained by gender expectations, despite professional advancements.

Romy is portrayed as a strong, well respected figure in her industry, but she lacks the emotional vulnerability expected of women both at work and at home. When she feels a desire for Samuel early in the film, she punishes herself for it. After fantasizing about Samuel, Romy forces herself through an intense beauty routine, trying to regain the strength and control she feels she needs to project.

In their first sexual encounter, Samuel instructs Romy to get on her hands and knees and eat a candy from his palm. The scene then shifts, where Romy is forced to the floor while Samuel masturbates her. This scene focuses on Kidman’s performance rather than graphic details.

Review: Sudan, remember us Time is a wheel that never stops Nidhil Vohra Video Associate

Resistance is the genesis of independence. Any act of defiance towards an oppressor requires freedom of thought, which is ultimately followed by freedom through deliberate collective action. Freedom becomes a strenuous process drawn out across time, rather than achieved in a momentous individual victory. A wheel that starts spinning from when the first protest begins.

Hind Meddeb’s Sudan, remember us emphatically captures this paradoxical coexistence of freedom amidst oppression. The film, which documents the 2019 sit-in protest for democracy in Sudan, celebrates the willpower of the nation’s diverse citizens in their efforts to peacefully engage with the oppressive leadership to further their demands.

Meddeb’s movie begins in the days following the ousting of President Omar al-Bashir, covering

Sudan’s descent into a military rule while the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) vied for control. Several segments filmed at the sit-in amplify the reliance on creative expression as an outlet for people in their pursuit of democracy. Meddeb makes Sudanese protest poetry and music the focal point of the film, focusing on civil disobedience and non-violence.

The terror succeeding these euphoric acts of creative expression is effectively documented through cell phone videos filmed by those under siege.

Virality and visibility underscore Meddeb’s humanitarian message, adding a subtle potency to her efforts to revert attention to the oftensidelined crisis in Sudan. The vertical format of the cell phone videos creates a necessary formal and emotional divergence from the film’s poetic rebellion to confront the violence that still mars Sudan today. The conflict on screen mirrors itself in the conflict between the 9:16 and the 16:9 video

Kidman and Dickinson are imbued with a gripping and potent sensuality that permeates each moment.

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Reijin explained in the Q&A that, “I don’t like graphic sexuality… personally, I only like the suggestion… it’s way more sexual and almost embarrassing to watch [Samuel] give [Romy] a command and her doing it.” The subtle approach here enhances the feeling of semi-awkward tension during sex scenes and adds to the shots’ realism.

Romy is a deeply insecure character, despite her powerful position at work. She faces belittling comments from Samuel and her other

colleagues, who criticize her perceived inability to be emotionally vulnerable and her indecent conduct with Samuel. This dynamic creates an intense, awkward, erotic tension in every scene between Romy and Samuel. Although the film’s sex scenes are not explicitly graphic — with minimal nudity from both Kidman and Dickinson — the interactions between them are imbued with a gripping and potent sensuality that permeates each moment.

formats, further emphasizing the conflict brewing within the protestors who are caught between the choice to save themselves or stand firm and fight with the others.

“My rights mean nothing if they have none,” screams one of the protestors, referring to children who have been left orphaned, neglected, and starved amid the chaos of regime change.

There is honesty in Meddeb’s portrayal of the protests and of the aftermath following the Khartoum massacre, when the RSF brought a gruesome end to the sit-in, killing hundreds of people. Her directorial shrewdness is in no doubt advised by her illustrious career as a journalist and a long-time documentary filmmaker. In her previous film, Paris Stalingrad, Meddeb depicted the struggle of migrants from Africa and Afghanistan in the French capital’s ‘Stalingrad district,’ following a young man from Darfur who recites poetry to cope with his hardships.

“Sudan found me in Paris,” the director remarked while introducing her latest film at TIFF. However, while Paris Staligrad was prompt and robust in its critique of the French government, such an acute examination of Sudan’s sensitive socio-political tensions remained absent from Sudan, remember us.

The cinematography in Sudan, remember us, indicates further that this film is less a war movie

and more a protest movie, as her camera is extremely sensitive towards the protestors when in rebellion. This sensitivity is best exemplified through a scene where a young man sheds a silent tear while painting a mural of those killed in the Khartoum massacre. The headlights of a parked sedan illuminate the scene as his paintbrush gently pecks the wall. His eyes are wet. The paint is wet.

Meddeb clearly understands the position she holds as a passive observer and grants the moment to whom it belongs to. While this choice makes for an exceptionally meditative document, it eventually loses its confidence as the film struggles to deepen its state of meditation. The film remains quite impactful until the emotional well runs dry, beyond which it has little commentary on Sudan’s past, present, or future.

Internal conflict mirrors the external and both find a release in expression, in a silent rebellion.

Resistance remains an active reality for Sudanese people, even today. They grieve, paint, scream, and flee — all while they defiantly protest for democracy, all while they dream of freedom — from the past, in the present, and for the future.

“Time is a wheel that never stops,” said the Sudanese poet Mohamed Al-Hassan Hummaid, and as the concluding monologue in Meddeb’s film says, “Remember me when victory comes.”

Until then, victory rests in resistance.

Hind Meddeb’s film is less a war movie and more a protest movie.

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ARTS & CULTURE

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Review: The Shrouds Cronenberg’s meditation on the grasping desire to possess what can never be yours again Shebonti Khandaker Varsity Contributor

“Grief is rotting your teeth.” From the very first line of The Shrouds, its message is clear. The latest from body horror pioneer David Cronenberg is a visceral meditation on how grief invades the flesh and how technology, in turn, invades the grieving process. The film follows businessman Karsh (Vincent Cassel), who, in mourning the death of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger), establishes GraveTech: a company that enables mourners to watch their loved ones’ corpses decompose in real-time.

Anyone who has seen the director will recognize him in Karsh. What begins as an exhumation of Cronenberg’s grief after losing his wife Carolyn to cancer quickly metastasizes. As Karsh grows increasingly paranoid about tumorous growths appearing on Becca’s decaying skeleton, Cronenberg puppeteers him through a labyrinthine

technothriller involving international politics and artificial intelligence.

The paranoid tangle of half-explored conspiracies, however, only distracts from the true emotional heart of the movie, which lies in Karsh’s inability to part from his deceased wife. In an early scene, he reflects on how the soul haplessly hovers over the body after death, having only experienced the world through its eyes. When Karsh later says, “I lived in Becca’s body, it was the only place I really lived, it was the world,” it becomes clear that Cronenberg’s vision of grief involves the separation of lovers’ souls from their loved ones’ bodies.

Cronenberg previously explored this theme in his 2021 short film The Death of David Cronenberg: another elegy to Carolyn where the director climbs into bed with his own corpse. During the post-screening Q&A for The Shrouds, he explained that losing one’s partner differs from losing a parent because lovemaking with a partner

David Cronenberg provides a visceral meditation on how grief invades the flesh.

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uniquely recontextualizes one’s understanding of their body. Through this lens, the loss of a loved one is akin to the mutilation of the surviving lover.

Karsh’s dialogue throughout the film is steeped with romantic viscera, reflecting Cronenberg’s fascination with embodiment. He drowns in the “fluid of grief,” aches to climb into Becca’s grave, and even dons a GraveTech Shroud to simulate how his own corpse might decay. A brief moment of particular necrophiliac depravity sees him discussing the possibility of haptic integration into the Shroud — enabling not just visual, but tactile interaction with the corpse.

In denying Becca her privacy in death, Karsh grapples with a recurring theme in Cronenberg’s

works: the idea that “body is reality,” as seen in his 2022 film Crimes of the Future. As Cronenberg noted after the film, the belief that the body is the sole mediator of life entails that death is both final and absolute. Karsh’s rebellion against this finality is manifested through GraveTech, which interposes screens between the living and the dead to mediate and extend grief — thus denying the corpse its right to an ending.

A tremendous monument to grief in Cronenberg’s trademark language of transmutation and decay, The Shrouds meditates on the grasping desire to possess what can never be yours again.

As Cronenberg wryly noted before bidding his rapt audience goodbye, “cinema is a cemetery.”

Review: Saturday Night Saturday Night fails to be funny, but its chaos is entertaining and anxiety-inducing Kyla Cassandra Cortez Managing Editor, External

While IMDb labels the film as a biographical comedy-drama, director Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night falls flat with its humour. The jokes, primarily repetitive and lame sexual innuendos, are poorly delivered by much of the cast. As a casual fan of Saturday Night Live (SNL) myself, I found its mediocre 49th season to be more amusing than this movie.

However, Reitman deserves credit for inducing anxiety and dramatic chaos in the audience, which earns the film its label as a biographical drama.

Saturday Night starts at 10:00 pm on October 11, 1975 — 90 minutes before the first premiere of SNL. With the clock counting down to 11:30 pm, the pressure of getting everything and everyone ready for air falls on the new Canadian producer — and U of T alumnus — Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle).

As Jon Batiste’s heart-pounding score starts to play — filled with arrays of instruments and loud, relentless drums — Michaels’ stress becomes palpable as he frantically runs from one crisis to the other, trying to extinguish the pure chaos ensuing

in Studio 8H. The chaos includes a stubborn John Belushi (Matt Wood), who refuses to sign a hiring contract and ends up in a physical altercation with the attractively vain Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith). Meanwhile, other crew members are either high from marijuana or rejecting family-friendly edits to the script. In a nutshell, the film embodies the meme of the dog calmly saying, “This is fine,” in the middle of a room on fire.

In the eyes of a then-NBC executive David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), the show is doomed to fail. However, knowing that SNL would go on to become one of the longest-running and most successful live shows, the suspense of whether it will succeed is undermined. Instead, the film plays out as a typical underdog story about a young unknown trying to make a name for himself. Though the plot is rushed to mirror the show’s time-sensitive nature, some context between the characters and their relationships with each other would have filled that void — like Belushi and Chase’s feud or the failing marriage of Michaels and his co-writer and wife, Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott).

From fast camera pans to low-angle shots of the old snobby white executives who are men, the film’s cinematography effectively captures the

Saturday Night delivers unresolved chaos that leads to no substantial ending.

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showrunner’s pressure to maintain control amid the mayhem. But that’s all that Saturday Night has to offer — unresolved chaos that leads to no substantial ending. Its captivating cinematography can’t save its exhausted story.

Batiste’s score underlines each of Michael’s challenges. However, the music frequently drowns out the characters’ dialogue which, whether intentional or not, proves to be an inconvenience.

What made Saturday Night intriguing to watch was the cast’s skillful imitations of their real-life counterparts, particularly Smith’s and LaBelle’s performances. Smith excelled in capturing Chase’s arrogance and humour, especially in his interaction with Wood’s Belushi. A notable touch was Smith’s ability to infuse a bit of humanity into Chase, making the character more likable than the real-life figure.

Overall, the ensemble was impressive, with each actor bringing their own quirks and idiosyncrasies,

which made the film’s less successful jokes more tolerable.

LaBelle’s distress was vividly conveyed through his eyes, effectively communicating Michael’s inner turmoil and stress. LaBelle’s expressive performance allowed the audience to easily relate to Michaels’ experience and often spoke volumes without the need for many words. His on screen chemistry with Sennott’s Shuster was lacking but accurate, as they would get divorced later on in real life.

Saturday Night has the potential to become a commercial success, but don’t expect much comedy, as the drama shines through in this film. If you find yourself laughing, you might have more in common with the 30- and 40-year-olds who were enjoying the supposedly “funny” scenes — and that is okay. Perhaps, Reitman should have focused more on getting the show ready before it hit 11:30 pm.

Review: 40 Acres 40 Acres’ fictional family emotes celebrations and conflicts that feel incredibly present Alex Teschow Varsity Contributor

In 40 Acres, director and screenwriter R. T. Thorne embraces a world sparse in life beyond farmlands, cannibals, and the film’s central family. While occasional awkward dialogue and licensed music can break the immersion in the compelling narrative, the relatable relationships between parents and their teenage children effectively build tension and sustain the story throughout its two-hour runtime.

The film grabs you immediately with an opening action sequence that introduces the protagonist’s family as unapologetically violent and skilled in defending their farm in a post-apocalyptic, postcivil war Canada. Danielle Deadwyler’s Hailey, the matriarch of the Freeman family, runs a tight ship and is wary of outsiders. It is engaging to see how the family operates daily, creating culture and celebration despite their isolation. However, their status is precarious, especially as their teenage son Emmanuel (Kataem O’Connor), or Manny, begins to yearn for life beyond the farm’s electric fence.

The expansive farm and forest in this postapocalyptic Canada are striking, and vibrant with colours and shadows. The cinematography and lighting adeptly shift between depicting the world as quantifiable and controlled, and as sublime and unknown. A bright sky above the farm instills a sense of safety, while a clear stream under lush trees in the nearby forest justifies Manny’s desire to explore.

The towering trees loom over the survivors, their black bark serving as a canvas on which they imagine the mysteries lurking behind them.

At night, darkness engulfs the land, creeping up against the dim lights inside the house where the family sits around the dinner table. However, a bonfire in their driveway, set to celebrate a daughter’s coming of age, pierces the dark and inspires hope for the family’s survival. This interplay between the familiar and the unknown builds growing tension throughout the plot.

The film’s strongest aspects are its characters.

Deadwyler and Michael Greyeyes — as her husband Galen — excel in portraying the stoicism

A tense post-apocalyptic Canada with characters worth rooting for.

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required for their roles. Both actors have moments to shine, with Greyeyes particularly soaring in what is undeniably the most inventive bloodbath in the film.

Yet, it’s in the quieter moments between the action where the two stars showcase their acting skills. The family finds humour in their daily tasks of defending their farm and dealing with the aftermath, much to Hailey’s frequent dismay. The tension between Manny and his mother over the best way to navigate this harsh world, and who they can trust, mirrors the growing mystery of disappearing farms reported on the Freemans’ radio. This dual tension makes for a gripping first two acts.

Unfortunately, a few elements detracted from my immersion into the film. The licensed tracks sometimes felt distracting and out of place, as though

they were imitating a potentially better-suited, more commercial piece. Additionally, some occasional clunky dialogue, particularly in the second act, disrupted the experience.

However, the characters remained strong, and the score effectively captured the emotional tone of each scene. The thrilling finale, while predictable, delivers a satisfyingly graphic conclusion. What the third act may lack in surprise, it compensates with memorable character scenes that had my theatre applauding unashamedly.

It is safe to say that Thorne rises to the challenge of his feature debut, delivering a film that portrays a timeless familial struggle in a terrifyingly uncertain world. The characters shine in moments both big and small, but most importantly, they do not hesitate to fight back and defend what matters to them.

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TIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFFTIFF Review: The Seed of the Sacred Fig Rasoulof’s film tells an emotionally intimate story of a family in political turmoil Isabella Reny Deputy Senior Copy Editor

Content warning: This article discusses misogyny, physical and systemic violence, and descriptions of murder.

In 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old KurdishIranian woman, died in police custody while visiting Tehran with her family. She was stopped by the ‘morality police’ for allegedly not complying with Iran’s mandatory hijab regulations. Her death

sparked widespread protests in demand for the abolition of the morality police, the removal of hijab regulations, and the ousting of the theocratic regime. Students at U of T also held protests in solidarity with the protesters in Iran.

This is the reality that Mohammad Rasoulof, director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig, is deeply invested in. An Iranian exile, Rasoulof was sentenced to prison for filming without a permit, among other things and has since fled to Europe.

The film’s production was fraught with challenges as the Iranian government pressured the cast

and crew to withdraw from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where the film premiered.

The film tells the story of Iman — an investigator in the Tehran Revolutionary Court — and the women in his family. Iman’s wife, Najmeh, is devout and nurturing, striving to keep her family together despite her two daughters’ engagements with the political turmoil in their home country. Sana (Setareh Maleki), the younger sister, is emotionally driven and idealizes her father as a principled man.

Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), the older sister, is more politically astute and committed to justice, even when it puts her at odds with her more conservative parents, especially her father.

Every shot in the film is profoundly intimate, focusing primarily on the family home. We watch Najmeh and her daughters cook dinner, eat, and wash dishes together. The dinner scenes in particular are consistently shot at eye level, allowing us to engage in their conversations about political, social, and emotional issues — issues that they too

The film engages with the paranoia that stems from being part of a theocracy like Iran’s.

are working through. This approach makes us feel as though we are at the table, intimately involved in their lives.

The camera often shows the family from behind, immersing viewers in the tension, paranoia, and sadness experienced by the family members.

The depictions of family life and the complex relationships between women are realistic: the side-eye glances of the mother when she catches her daughters in a lie and the shy guilt the daughters display when they admit to hiding Sadaf — a politically active friend of Rezvan — in their bedroom are portrayed with striking authenticity.

One scene that particularly stood out was after Sadaf was shot during a student protest at her university. Sadaf’s face is marred by shrapnel, her eye bloody and bruised.The same tweezers that Najmeh used to pluck her daughters’ eyebrows are now used to remove ball bearings from Sadaf’s eye. The daughters’ bedroom — which once was bathed in white light and cool tones as the four women huddled together, scrolling online and painting their nails — is now cast in a sickly yellow lighting. Hazy camerawork draws the audience into the scene, while the close-ups of the actresses’ faces reveal the depth of their sorrow.

The film’s main theme revolves around the paranoia that stems from being part of a theocratic regime like Iran’s. Earlier in the film, Iman asserts that he has absolute trust in his wife. Yet later on, the disappearance of a gun that Iman’s job issued to him triggers his suspicion, leading him to accuse his wife and daughters of the theft.

His job — the overwhelming criminal cases that begin to consume him — raises doubt in his mind, leading him to view his family as though they were the criminals he prosecutes.

As Iman’s paranoia reaches a crescendo, the torture he inflicts upon his family — physical abuse, humiliation, and imprisonment — mirrors the punishment Iran’s justice system inflicts on its people. Iman’s complicity in a system that inflicts such degrading harm inevitably brings this cruelty into his personal life. When a system is designed to make everyone a criminal, it’s only a matter of time before everyone is deemed guilty of a crime.

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Review: Paying for It Re-defining intimacy in this auto-fictional Toronto-based film Charmaine Yu Opinion Editor

Sook-Yin Lee directed one of the most exciting films of 2024, Paying For It, which premiered on September 6 at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film is adapted from a confessional graphic novel written by none other than her exboyfriend.

In Chester Brown’s 2011 ‘comic strip memoir’ of the same name, he documents the aftermath of his breakup with Lee — renamed to Sonny in the film and played by Emily Lê — as she begins falling in love with someone else. Disillusioned by heartbreak in Toronto in the ’90s, Chester (Daniel Beirne) begins visiting sex workers to explore questions about romance, monogamy, and intimacy.

Having co-written the screenplay with Joanne Sarazen, Lee created a film with thrilling layers of meta-storytelling. During the Q&A section at the film premiere, Lee described it as “autofiction,” explaining that they shot in the same house where everything originally happened, reconstructing the lives of Chester and Sonny.

With its quirky, whimsical cinematography, a film score that transports you back to the ’90s alternative scene, and a script oozing with dry humour reminiscent of Juno (2007) or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), it’s only a matter of time before Paying for It becomes the newest cult classic for Toronto hipsters and beyond.

A celebration of sex work Throughout the film, Chester visits several sex workers across Toronto. However, during these sexual encounters, the narrative rarely focuses

on him, instead highlighting the women. The audience is welcomed into the lives of the sex workers as they share how they started working in the industry and why some prefer it over their previous jobs.

With unabashed nudity throughout, Paying for It seeks to dismantle misconceptions about sex work, opening up a candid conversation about sexual empowerment. Notably, the final sex worker that Chester visits, Denise, is portrayed by actress and author Andrea Werhun: a former escort, stripper, and harm reduction worker. This not only strengthens the film’s ‘auto-fictional’ element, but also demonstrates that the creators took care to consult and collaborate with people who have lived that experience.

Injected with tongue-in-cheek humour in scenes of nervous first-time sexual encounters, awkward silences during intercourse, and — occasionally — finishing too early, the film ultimately highlights sex workers’ autonomy and advocates for stronger workers’ rights.

Toronto’s youthful charm Throughout the film, we see Chester working on his cartoons — many of which are directly drawn from Brown’s graphic novel — alongside clips of Sonny’s music broadcast show, which recalls Lee’s time as a host at MuchMusic, a program that featured Canadian musicians. The interwoven silly illustrations and punchy grunge-rock music, which interrupt emotional or politicallycharged dialogue, checked all the boxes for what I look for in a film: funny, cool, and sentimental.

The youthful charm of Toronto in the ’90s electrifies the film. U of T students who have

Paying for It seeks to dismantle misconceptions about sex work.

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come to call this city home will undoubtedly spot a few familiar places, including Kensington Market, Sneaky Dee’s, and even Buddha’s Vegan Restaurant at 666 Dundas.

It’s about remembering “the tender and precious spaces left in our city,” Lee explained in the post-premiere Q&A. Paying for It also explores the cringe-worthy and confusing feelings of being young in a big city. “There’s something about youth — there’s an openness, a willingness to make mistakes,” she said to the audience.

Is love just a selfish possession?

The big question driving Chester on his odyssey of new sexual experiences is whether love necessitates ownership.

Lee, along with Brown’s novel, invites the audience to ponder whether love requires possessing someone else or surrendering oneself to another. Though these ideas sound like a mimicry of each other, I suspect you may find

clarity in witnessing Chester’s unconventional relationship with Denise, Sonny’s failed flings with new boyfriends, and most importantly, the evolving nature of Chester and Sonny’s bond which transcends the platonic.

Among powerful performances throughout the cast, Lê stood out to me, with her erratic outbursts and vulnerable tears of despair — and I found myself in awe.

Although the film begins with Chester and Sonny’s breakup, it offers much more than that. It takes you on an empathetic journey, highlighting the lives of sex workers, discussing women’s sexual rights and queer liberation, and challenging stereotypes about Asian women.

Paying for It embodies the fiery ambitions of youth by trying to be many things at once.

While you might expect it to stumble — much like many of us twenty-somethings do — it somehow manages to stick every damn landing.

Sports

September 17, 2024 thevarsity.ca/section/sports sports@thevarsity.ca

Playing it right: The importance of sports depictions in film How the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of portraying sports can shape a movie Grace David Varsity Contributor

Throughout time, avid sports fans have had to turn away from the TV in shame of watching an athlete’s embarrassing fumble, a childlike misplay, or a missed shot on an empty net. Unfortunately, many fans have also had to turn away from the TV in shame because movies — despite the hours of work to bring these creative works to fruition — do not know how to portray sports properly.

There are countless examples of sports movies butchering the sport they are trying to portray. Many of these examples are minor misrepresentations. In the movie 42: A True Story of an American Legend, Jackie Robinson hits a home run in the top of the 9th inning. A walk-off win for Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers! Unfortunately, the Dodgers were the away team. There will never be a last at-bat for the away team because they always bat first, thus giving the opposing team a chance to score in the bottom half of the inning. A real game could not have ended there.

Such minute details are easy to overlook, as they are often included for dramatization and are not glaringly obvious to the average viewer. But there are other examples of fundamental inaccuracies in movies which are much more difficult to dismiss.

My favourite example is from a recent movie about golf, The Long Game. It is a story about a group of young, Mexican high school boys learning to play golf in the 50s. Unfortunately, the most memorable thing about that movie was that the golfing was terrible. Notably, one of the golfers was struggling while golfing right-handed. The coach, noticing this, suggested he try golfing left-handed. The golfer turned around but continued using the same club.

Has nobody working on The Long Game ever picked up a golf club? It should be common knowledge on a set for a golfing movie that right-handed and left-handed clubs are not interchangeable. Any viewer who has ever held a club would know that the coach is giving phony advice. Viewers who have a sincere love for golf

would recognize such errors because they affect their perception of the film. How can golfers take a golf movie seriously if the movie does not know the fundamentals of the sport? Not only golfers, but viewers who would watch this movie to learn more about the sport will leave with an inaccurate understanding of how the sport is played.

Another example that blatantly misrepresents a sport is Rocky IV. In the fourth installment of his movie saga, Rocky Balboa (Sylvestre Stallone) is seen in the boxing ring taking dozens of hits to his face — without even raising his arms in defence.

You don’t need to be a boxer to know that, when getting pummeled, you should probably put your arms up. It was meant to showcase how tough Rocky is and the lengths of pain he is willing to endure to win the match.

Boxing is not a sport of brute strength and grit, as Rocky IV depicts. Boxing requires immense grit but grit does not save boxers from brain damage or death. It is hard for the audience to believe that Rocky can survive these hits and continue showing up to the ring for more. Rocky undermines the authenticity of the game — reducing boxing to unrealistic violence and ‘macho man’ antics instead of a sport requiring skill, strategy, and strength. Such flagrant misrepresentations feel disingenuous to viewers as the movie was clearly produced with no

Five must-watch sports movies based on real events

Sports is one of those topics that people hardly ever agree on. Whether it’s ranking the greatest athletes and the best teams, or debating game outcomes, everyone has their opinions. When it comes to movies, the arguments are just as

an authentic experience of what hockey can be.

Another movie that does sports justice is Adam Sandler’s Hustle which follows a basketball scout and his newest prospect. The cast includes current and former NBA stars who can obviously all play basketball. The film includes a training montage that, while extreme, accurately depicts the real and challenging training that professional basketball players undergo. When films portray a sport right, they are honouring the skill and the hard work that athletes commit to their game. It ensures that the athletes’ achievements are recognized and celebrated in a way that matches the reality of their performance.

Out of respect to athletes, sports, and audiences, it is important to portray sports properly. In the end, however, whether the depiction of the sport is accurate or not, I believe that these films remind us that sports are about much more than a game.

If viewers want to see perfect form and proper gameplay, they can turn on ESPN, TSN, or any of the dozen sports channels readily available.

Sports movies are more relevant when viewers need a reminder that sports are about sacrifice, success, and community — all of which linger long after the final buzzer goes off.

VICKY HUANG/THE VARSITY

True stories, real masterpieces Atinc Goc Varsity Contributor

input from anyone who knows the game.

These misrepresentations then bring into question the authenticity of the story being shared. Many sports movies are based, at least loosely, on real events. When it is clear that the production team has no connection to the sport, it is easy to assume they have no connection to the story being told either. It is hard for viewers to appreciate the message of a movie when it is coming from an unreliable source.

Thankfully, not all sports representations are inaccurate. Many famous sports movies have gone above and beyond to give viewers an accurate picture of sports.

Miracle, a movie about the 1980 US men’s Olympic hockey team, did a phenomenal job of depicting hockey. They held casting auditions on an ice rink to ensure that all potential actors could skate.

They also not only choreographed gameplay based on Olympic tapes, but used original audio from the winning moments of the US vs. Soviet Union game too, as they could not replicate the energy of the crowd at the game. The movie conveyed the intensity of professional hockey. It showcased the magnitude of competing for such high stakes — for both the team and their fans — and gave viewers

fierce. Everyone has favourite films, actors, and directors. No list will ever satisfy every film lover.

Combine the two — sports and movies — and you have a recipe for endless debate. So The Varsity decided to weigh-in and revamp our list of the best sports movies based on real stories, which will likely spark both agreement and debate.

Sports and film always makes for great stories.

BRENNAN KARUNARATNE/THE VARSITY

Raging Bull (1980) If you are a Martin Scorsese fan, you probably love this movie. This is what made me fall in love with Scorsese’s work. Few sports movies dig as deep into the human soul as Raging Bull, which tells the story of Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), a troubled and volatile boxer whose greatest fights took place outside of the ring. Unlike most sports movies — which are often about a heroic story — this is a movie about anger and self-destruction. Kent Garrison, podcast producer for The Athletic, said Raging Bull would be his first choice when recommending a boxing movie.

Remember the Titans (2000) I‘m a simple guy — if Denzel Washington is in a movie, I’m going to like it. Remember the Titans is a classic sports movie that inspires you and they cast the right actor to do so. Set in the 70s, the movie tells the true story of an American high school football team in Virginia facing the challenges of racial integration. The movie is about fighting racism and finding unity, brotherhood, and leadership through sports. While the film’s depiction of racism can lack nuance and the script is somewhat cliché at times, Remember the Titans still delivers a heart-warming narrative at its core. If you love inspiring sports movies, this is a must-watch.

Moneyball (2011) Moneyball breaks away from traditional sports movie formulas by focusing on strategy over action.

The biographical story is almost too good to be true. It follows baseball team manager Billy Beane

(Brad Pitt) who uses data and analytics to build a competitive baseball team with a limited budget.

It questions the modern view of sports where star players are seen as the only way to success. The film shows that if you know what you’re looking for and where to find it, there will always be something valuable. It’s the ultimate underdog story: a perfect blend of reality and fairy tale.

Offside (2006) Offside offers a unique perspective on sports by focusing on a group of Iranian women who disguise themselves as men to attend a World Cup qualifying match, where women are banned from stadiums. Director Jafar Panahi’s daughter’s experience of being denied from entering a stadium was part of the real-life inspiration behind the movie. Throughout the film, the director raises questions about gender inequality, politics, and law. Unlike other sports movies, it is not about the game itself but more about the women’s struggle and fight to be a part of it.

Iron Claw (2023) Iron Claw is the most tragic movie I’ve seen in a long time, but the real-life story of the Von Erich wrestling family is even more tragic than depicted.

The movie is a deeply emotional portrayal of the highs and lows of the professional wrestling world.

It explores nuanced topics like toxic masculinity, generational trauma, and emotional abuse and the heavy consequences they bring. If you can handle the heartbreak, the film’s cinematography makes it a truly remarkable visual masterpiece.

CROSSWORD

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C R O S S W O R D

ACROSS 1. Racounteurs’ “Steady ___ Goes” 6. Settled a bill 10. Incredibles director who worked with Disney and Pixar 14. DNA shape 15. A pirate’s favourite letter?

16. Currency exchange fee 17. Sci-fi director known for an Alien concept and well-written leads who are women 18. Director that has a Jurassic Park load of classic movies 20. Whispered words 22. It often comes before pie 23. Prosciutto, eg.

25. Some windows operating systems 26. NYC radio station with conservative talk shows 29. They’re usually not hits 32. Pull behind, with a truck 35. “Get ___ !”

37. He started as an Inglourious Basterds in indie films but is now widely known 39. Milan opera house 41. Panting dog, eg.

42. My favourite — known for his lackadaisical, Slacker — style movies 44. Medieval architecture style 45. Abbreviation for English Language Services 46. Sheen 48. Millennials, informally 49. K-O connector 50. Triumphant cry 52. Educate again 56. Wildly influential director known for Citizen Kane DOWN 59. Main character trait in 4D’s 1958 classic is being an ___ 1. Common dentist sounds 61. Bounds like gazelles, 2. After 60 of these in Africa, or ante-___ 63. Directing duo that puts a minute passes the western in midwest with 3. Plum-like fruit a True Grit 4. Thriller director who 64. Coup d’ ____ brought many Psychos to life 65. The middle layers of your eye, 5. Expendable actor which contains 8D 6. It’s behind you 66. It’s connected to the thigh 7. Jean ___ bone 8. Pupil’s prop 67. Actor John ___- Davies 9. Approached swiftly, like a slasher 68. Modern thriller director who 10. “___ in Toyland” ‘got out’ from comedy 11. “___ that’s a lot” 12. Rihanna, to fans 13. Elon Musk’s cryptocurrency meme 19. Phrase that’s frustratingly sparse in horror movies 21. Diplomat’s res.

24. “Paper Planes singer”

ISSUE 2

A N S W E R K E Y

“Lights, camera, action!”

Kaiyo Freyder Varsity Contributor

26. Titular robot of a 2008 Pixar film 28. Could be shorthand for boatswains or Bostonians 30. Data science major 31. 2001 was his comeback 32. ~ ~ ~ ~ 33. A ___ base can lead to a two-run homer 34. “What, me ___?”

(Alfred E. Neuman) 36. Eaton directory, eg.

38. Strict but a caring parenting approach 40. Device that propels rockets or grenades 43. When you’ll arrive, Abbr.

47. “The Catcher in the ___” 49. Italian director that only made a Fistful of Dollars off of their westerns 51. “It’s __ to you” 52. Spice holder 53. Money major 54. Former sapling 55. Ice planet of another famous director 56. Dampens 57. Fencing blade 58. Flippered mammal 60. Explosive Bad Boys director known for overthe-top mayhem 62. Opposite of North

by Northwest

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