As I attended MIFF 2013 as an invited guest with my film Requiem For Romance, I was also able to see a lot of the great films that were playing at the festival. Here's a recap of four really cool feature films that I saw.
These Final Hours
These Final Hours is an Australian production. An apocalyptic film, where a meteor hits the Earth and minute by minute, the radio tells of how the rest of the world becomes engulfed by a cloud of fire. Australians know the world has ended and the fire of cloud is going to reach them in only a few hours. The main character leaves the girl he's with at the time to head to a party to be with his girlfriend, so they can get drunk and high and not feel anything when it happens. But on the way, driving out of his suburban neighbourhood, he sees a little girl get abducted and struggles with his conscience. He wants to let it go, but can't. He runs in the house and saves her from her abductors. This starts the two of them on a crazy journey first to make it to his drug party, only to realize he must help the girl re-unite her with her father and her family. In the process, he realizes who he really needs to be with in the final hours.
Beautifully shot, entertaining, and the main character is played perfectly by Nathan Philips.
https://www.facebook.com/TheseFinalHours
Blackbird
Blackbird is a Canadian production. It's a story about a high school student, Sean Randall, in a small town who finds himself in the worst possible situation, arrested and accused of plotting a school massacre, targeting specific individuals. This kid dresses all in black, listens to Goth music and has access to an arsenal of guns, and has posted gruesome videos and a detail of how he would execute his massacre. Tragedy prevented. But there's another side to the story. The guns belong to his father, and his father is a hunter. We find out that on a recent hunting expedition, Sean couldn't bring himself to shoot a deer. His father shoots it and as part of the routine clean up, his father pulls out an organ, and the boy decides to film it, and post it. That's the gruesome video. As for his online post, we find out that it's in response to a death threat from a hockey player who's girlfriend has taken interest in Sean. He wrote it as a fictional revenge story on the suggestion of a therapist encouraging him to write stuff down to deal with the constant bullying. At the heart of Sean's commitment to Goth music and clothing is the broken home he comes from, his parents are separated, he grew up with his mom in the city, but now that she has found a new husband, he was forced to move in with his dad in the small town, and he can't see his baby sister any more. The film explores bullying in the schools, bullying in the legal system, bullying in the prisons, and the dangers of making some poor decisions, but then trying to stand up for the truth.
https://www.facebook.com/BlackbirdTheFilm
Call Girl
Call Girl is a Swedish production. It's a suspenseful thriller surrounding factual political events in the 70's of powerful Swedish politicians and security officials involved as clients in a wide-spread prostitution ring run by a notorious Madame, whose girls include several under aged minors. The film follows two main characters, the first, a troubled 14 year old runaway who is easily recruited by the Madame with allure of money, drugs and parties with boys, and the intrepid government internal investigations officer, who happens to be the only male character in the movie who is young and doesn't wear creepy glasses. All of these events happen amidst a re-election campaign, and the trail of corruption leads higher and higher towards the upper echelons of power. The film is incredibly well shot, the costume designs and the look of the film really capture the feeling of that era, and an ending that made me jump in my seat.
Rhino Season
Rhino Season is an Iraqi, Turquish co-production and according to me, it was the best film of the film festival. It was an absolutely stunning story about a Kurdish-Iranian poet named Sahel who was jailed in Iran during the revolution, and his quest to find his wife upon his release from prison, 30 years later. His beautiful and faithful wife was also jailed for 10 years, and then was claimed or essentially captured by their former driver, after years of his lust for her in secret. A tension filled drama, the film dares to show us the darkest sides of imprisonment and freedom, while being artfully shot with metaphors stemming from the poet's words fading in and out of the film's narrative. With political turmoil as the backdrop, the story is about one man's unwavering drive to find his true love and another man's obsession with her. Cinematic. Powerful. Heart-stopping. With an ending fit for a master poet.
Rhino Season's IMDB and trailer.
