“We’re looking for films that people want to see, rather than films people ‘should’ see,’” said Miami Film Festival director Jaie Laplante during our conversation at the 35th edition of the event put together by Miami Dade College (March 9-18). Indeed, the program is not short on sophisticated crowd-pleasers handpicked from recent international competitions or selected based on their wide appeal with the city’s demographics: documentaries about different facets of Cuban culture or comedies centered on passionate soccer fans.  As a native Spanish speaker, Miami always feel like an enclave of Latin America to me; Spanish is a necessity and […]

Floating in an ocean of equals parts uncertainty and obscurity after winning the Grand Prix of the Generation 14plus International Jury in 2014, Bas Devos’s feature debut Violet didn’t reach American shores, beyond a handful of festivals, until new distributor Altered Innocence took a chance and set a theatrical date and announced a subsequent physical release. Saved from being forgotten, the film is one of the most striking and pure cinematic works to arrive stateside this year, and exemplifies the importance of betting on unorthodox voices that aim to challenge the medium’s formal conventions. Shot in the 4:3 aspect ratio […]

Hormones wreck havoc throughout the body, sending the fragile teenage ego into dismay, and for a good part of our formative years we exist in a state between childhood innocence and realizations of adulthood. Showcasing sharp wit and highly quotable dialogue, comic-book artist turned animator Dash Shaw has encapsulated all these feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing in his creatively unhinged first feature, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, which stars an enviable voice cast of indie stars: Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Susan Sarandon, Maya Rudolph and Reggie Watts. Pulling from his own recollections of navigating the dangerous waters […]

Lacking appropriate words, forcing an uncomfortable embrace and remembering once-forgotten regrets are common symptoms during a chance encounter with an old friend who, through the passage of time and often distance, has become little more than a stranger. Once that unexpected moment ends, most people return to their everyday routine, but what if, because of uncontrollable circumstances, one had to actually spend the day in the company of that somebody you used to know? Debutant Kris Avedisian sets his feature Donald Cried, in which he also stars as the title character, around such possibility and charges it with unbearably cringe-worthy […]

If comforting hugs could be delivered in visual form, My Life as a Zucchini would be the warmest of them all. Kindhearted but not sugarcoated, Claude Barras’ first animated feature has quickly become a global phenomenon, winning many international awards and now an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. Its most delightful victory, however, is in dealing with hardship and tragedy with honest tactfulness wrapped in colorful design. Social realism filtered through the magical physicality of stop-motion is the recipe at the root of this touching adaptation of French scribe Gilles Paris’s novel, for which Girlhood director Céline Sciamma […]

Reconciling the flawed humanity of a person with their extraordinary deeds means accepting that both vice and virtue can coexist. Ditching the narrative shackles of biographical films that aims to encompass the entirety of a person’s life, even if that means just piecing together a sequence of significant events, Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín inventively designed an iridescent impression of his homeland’s most notable artist, Pablo Neruda, which captures his essence without simplifying his humanity. No stranger to revisiting Chile’s most scabrous historical passages through a fictional lens that neither condemns nor absolves, in Neruda Larraín presents the man as a masterful poet, lazy communist, seductive […]

Spoken language is direct and concise, but the most necessary messages are never successfully conceived or delivered through words. Silent gestures, decisive actions, and tangible kindness construct the most vivid memories of an individual’s existence. Michaël Dudok de Wit’s heart-rending masterpiece The Red Turtle engages in conversation with the core of the human condition without ever uttering a single sentence. A man with no name, past, religion or even nationality becomes a castaway after a brutal storm. Alone on an island, the man battles solitude, desperation, fear, and anger with only nature as witness. The existential grandeur of Terrence Malick’s works is […]

Nothing on screen is ever fully truth. Even in the most honest and seemingly unbiased documentaries, manipulation and subjectivity reign. That caveat is accepted when there is explicit knowledge that one’s watching creative content, but blatant deceit is a much dangerous affair. In Operation Avalanche, director Matt Johnson travels in time to 1967 to ingeniously recreate and humorously speculate about some of the most divisive footage in American history, moving images that surely change the landscape of what humanity was capable of. For some, however, the moon landing is an orchestrated sham built on the artifice of moviemaking. Johnson’s sophomore […]

A calling card to showcase proficiency and ambition, a vehicle to find resources for a larger project, or simply the most appropriate, or simply cost effective, way to tell a story, short films continue to be crucial for the development and discovery of emerging storytellers. The lack of access to more substantial budgets and the relative democratization of the medium via new technologies are major reasons why filmmakers continue to rely on short form narratives to fine-tune their craft at a lower risk. Today, festivals are receiving more and more short film submissions, making standing out from the pack increasingly […]

To fuel their tentpole machines, studios have gotten into the habit of poaching successful independent filmmakers to direct (or at least assume the role of the director in a ceremonial way on) their most valuable franchises. Some would argue that the practice exists to cut down on costs and allow executives to easily manipulate a filmmaker with less leverage or experience. Indeed, when this happens, the result is often disastrous. Nevertheless, young storytellers continue to be tempted by studio-based jobs-for-hire that wind up costing them their creative freedom. By comparison, the independent model allows filmmakers an enviable amount of experimentation, […]