Beginning with 2011’s Is the City Only One?, Brazilian filmmaker Adirley Queirós has considered the history of his hometown of Ceilândia in sci-fi and western-inflected narratives made in close collaboration with nonprofessional performers. Dry Ground Burning, co-directed by the former soccer player-turned-filmmaker with Joana Pimenta (the DP of his 2017 Once There Was Brasilia), was shot over 18 months and took two years of post-production to complete, and that labor shows in the most expansive and ambitious of these films yet, each of which builds on and echoes its predecessors. Is the City Only One? foregrounds the experiences of workers […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 16, 2023Unknown Wonders—a Bulgari ad (or, as the fashion house would have it, “brand film”)—was the second sponsor bumper before every public screening at this year’s TIFF. The first time I saw it, the credit “Anne Hathaway” was unsurprising enough, but being followed by one for Zendaya and “A film by Paolo Sorrentino” had a Family Guy mad libs quality. I laughed helplessly and instantly hated it, even though (or especially because) it’s a predictable commercial in which two stars vibe at a luxurious Italian villa. The assignment perfectly fits Sorrentino’s sensibility, down to a peacock entering the frame, and hence partially […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 19, 2022My favorite film of the Berlinale was Queens of the Qing Dynasty, Ashley McKenzie’s ambitious and otherworldly fantasia about a “queer friendship romance” between a suicidal young woman and a Chinese immigrant she meets while hospitalized. Inspired by two teenagers she befriended during the casting of her previous feature, Werewolf (2016), McKenzie first sketched out the central character, Star (Sarah Walker), whose everyday life is mediated by endless negotiations with social workers, doctors, guardians, landlords and the various bureaucracies that employ them. Star is aging out of child protective services and has been deemed unfit to live independently, so as […]
by Darren Hughes on Mar 22, 2022