Part of IFP’s 2013 Project Forum slate, Cocaine Prison is the latest completed work from indigenous Latina filmmaker Violeta Ayala, who’s long been an outspoken critic of the War on Drugs, which not only disproportionately affects low-income folks here in the States, but especially our impoverished neighbors south of the border, from Mexico on down. For this follow-up to 2015’s The Bolivian Case (another tale of South American coke smuggling and its consequences, but with a Norwegian teenagers twist), Ayala, along with filmmaker partner/husband Dan Fallshaw (a producer, cinematographer and editor on Cocaine Prison), have headed back to her birth […]

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13th, Sterlin Harjo’s latest narrative feature Mekko treads territory both familiar and new to this Oklahoma-based, Native American director. An ex-con-versus-thug thriller set in the world of Tulsa’s real-life Indian homeless community, the film stars Hollywood stuntman Rod Rondeaux and boasts an all-Native cast (many of whom are part of that aforementioned homeless community). Filmmaker caught up with Harjo prior to TIFF to talk about his fourth feature – as well as German Indian-philia, Herzog’s Stroszek, and Native humor. Filmmaker: Mekko takes place in an Indian homeless community, and you use […]

The 38th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival is well past its halfway point. The big red-carpet premieres are fading into the distance. As all the hoopla dies down, little-known indies from all over the globe are jockeying for much desired attention amidst the fest’s sprawling slate. A festival for all tastes, Toronto’s lineup features a smorgasbord of world and North American premieres, many of them more or less shared with Venice and Telluride, on top of a smattering of films from earlier in the circuit calendar, across every conceivable discipline of modern filmmaking. Acquisitions so far have been […]

Premiering at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival is 1982, the directorial debut of noted independent producer Tommy Oliver (Kinyarwanda). Set in Philadelphia in the year of the film’s title, 1982 is the story of a father (an affecting Hill Harper) torn between his love for his wife, who has descended into crack addition, and his responsibilities to his young daughter. Set during the start of the crack epidemic, 1982 is an intimate film that returns us to a time, pre-The Wire and and all of the other drug dramas of the last three decades, when crack changed the character […]

After two small-scale New York indie features, set in the world of standup comedy (2007’s Goodbye Baby) and low-budget film (2012’s Supporting Characters), writer/director Daniel Schechter has made the unlikely but extremely welcome step up to a very different kind of movie. Life of Crime, which closes the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, is not only based on a novel (The Switch) by the late, great Elmore Leonard but boasts a high-caliber cast featuring Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins, Isla Fisher, John Hawkes, Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), Will Forte and Mark Boone Jr. A dark crime comedy, Schechter’s film […]

Through my late teens, my Sunday mass of choice was the 1pm. I was lucky to belong to Catholic parish that was built in the turn of the century; I loved the dark wood, red velvet, shadowy vibe and how it contrasted to the sunny bustle out on the street. Later in life, as I gained the courage to face reality without a dogmatic crutch, I still longed for that peaceful hour spent in quiet reflection in the middle of the day.  At 1pm this Sunday, a TIFF 150-seat theater was filled with a festival audience that remained totally still […]