While Donald J Trump was being inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America, the South African film The Wound was making its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah – the first of its multiple screenings at the world’s most popular independent film showcase and springboard for future Oscar nominees. That it played during the time Trump was officially sworn in doesn’t seem to have apparent significance, but the ethos behind making The Wound is the kind that’ll become more necessary in an era of a leader who touts discriminatory rhetoric that reverberates across the world. Among critics at Sundance, The Wound has…
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Patriots’ Day on the Big Screen
Monday night the HBO doc on the Boston Marathon bombings aired, and on the same night I got to see the Hollywood version of the story, made by Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg, the third of their recent movies together (following Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon). It hones in on the bombings – how they were carried out, and the aftermath of how the authorities worked to find the men responsible. It’s been 3 years since the two bombs went off at the finish line of the world’s oldest marathon, and there may be never be a good enough time to bring a movie to the big screen about those days in April 2013, but…
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No Ghosts Please, Just Filmmakers
When the person sitting next to you on the plane tells you they made the Weiner documentary, it can be hard to suppress the urge to geek out entirely and bombard them with questions about how they made the film, which follows the former NYC mayoral candidate as he attempts to mount his great comeback. How he let them continue to shoot even when he’d been caught again for his sexting exploits (and this was even before the latest Hillary-enveloping development); how each new scandal has affected their film; whether they’d go back and do a follow-up. So many questions. Finding myself next to directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg on my flight to Savannah…
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In Celebration of Subtitles.
Oh, how I’ve grown to love the Foreign Language category of the Oscars. When I was younger and watching the ceremony, I’d usually pass it over, because there were no recognizable stars to me, and, what kid is really watching films with subtitles? Thankfully, growing up and into my cinema tastes opened a whole new world, and movies with subtitles have been some of the most rewarding film experiences I’ve ever had. Especially in my own home country of South Africa, where foreign language unfortunately also encompassed 9 of the 11 official languages. It’s been 10 years since South Africa had a film competing for a Best Foreign Language Oscar. That film was Tsotsi, and…
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African Film at the Toronto Film Festival
This story first appeared in The Sunday Times. The line of people wrapped around the building and carried on across the street. It wasn’t for Arrival, the new science-fiction offering sure to have Academy Award members talking about Amy Adams for months to come. Nor was it for the latest Ryan Gosling-Emma Stone onscreen pairing, La La Land, that’s had critics swooning. For sure, these films drummed up their share of attention at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), but this particular bulging line, filled with people dressed in their finest, was for The Wedding Party — a rom-com set in Lagos. This year’s festival highlighted Nigeria’s film industry,…
